South Korea’s nonlife insurance firms saw their combined net profit drop 24.6 percent in the first nine months of 2019 from a year earlier, mainly due to increased losses stemming from their long-term insurance and auto insurance businesses, data showed Dec. 2.

Nonlife insurance firms operating in Korea reported a combined net profit of 2.2 trillion won ($1.8 billion) for the January-September period, compared with 2.9 trillion from a year earlier, the Financial Supervisory Service said in a statement.

The FSS said the combined losses of auto insurers widened 303.1 percent on-year to 824 billion won in the first nine months of the year, compared with 204.4 billion won a year earlier.

The combined net losses of long-term insurance businesses rose 48.1 percent on-year to 3.3 trillion won for the January-September period as operating expenses increased 11.6 percent from the previous year and the amount of loss grew 4.7 percent.

By Ram Garikipati and newswires (ram@heraldcorp.com)