Samsung Group’s financial affiliates including Samsung Life Insurance Co., Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance Co. and Samsung Card Co. decided to retain their heads for another term to stabilize management as the group is facing unprecedented leadership vacuum following the arrest of its de facto leader Jay Y. Lee on bribery charges.

The group’s insurance arms Samsung Life and Samsung Fire & Marine held a regular shareholders’ meeting last Friday and approved the plan to retain the respective chief executive officers Kim Chang-soo and Ahn Min-soo. The both chiefs, promoted to the position in 2014, will continue to head the Korea’s largest life and non-life insurers until March 2020.

Kim managed to keep his position as he had been freed from the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS)’s regulatory action on Samsung Life for its overdue suicide claims. The FSS eased disciplinary actions on the life insurer as it decided to pay 174 billion won ($155 million) in suicide claims early this month. Upon the decision, the FSS downgraded its punitive actions a notch to warning level, helping Kim to pursue another term in office.

“I feel a grave sense of responsibility as the insurance industry is facing crisis amid low interest rate and low growth on top of the introduction of the new global insurance standard, International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) 17,” said Kim during the shareholder’s meeting. “We will focus on expanding products portfolio and cost saving this year,” he added.

Ahn was credited for maintaining Samsung Fire & Marine’s number one position in the industry by achieving 860.6 billion won in net income on a consolidated business last year, up 5.7 percent from a year earlier.

Shareholders of Samsung Card also approved the plan to keep Won Gee-chan as its CEO for another three years. Despite the cut in credit card fees, Samsung Card last year recorded 430.9 billion won in operating profit and 3.47 trillion won in sales, up by 12.2 percent and 5.1 percent respectively from the previous year.

By Kim Tae-sung and Chung Ji-sung

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