Korean Re Brand Guidelines: Seoul’s 1963 State Reinsurer and Its 2023 Identity

From a government corporation to a listed company.

Korean Re began in Seoul on 19 March 1963 as a state-owned company, the Korean Non-life Reinsurance Corporation, according to the company’s own history; Korean Wikipedia gives the same year and describes it as a national enterprise. Its job was to take on part of the risks written by South Korea’s direct insurers — the reinsurance that lets an insurance company spread large or unusual risks beyond its own balance sheet.

The corporation widened its scope within a few years. Korean Wikipedia says it gained a licence to handle life reinsurance in 1968 and was listed on the Korea Stock Exchange in 1969. In 1978 the government sold its stake and the business was privatised; the company dates its reorganisation as the publicly owned Korean Reinsurance Company to 2 March 1978.

Growth abroad started almost at once. The company says it opened a Singapore branch in November 1978 and, in 1995, set up Worldwide Insurance Services in Hong Kong. It built a new head office in Seoul in 1984 and, in 1999, published a long-range plan called “Vision 2020.”

On 27 June 2002 the company took the shorter name Korean Re and launched a new corporate identity, its history says; Korean Wikipedia also dates the change of name to 2002. That October, the company says, the Singapore magazine Asia Insurance Review named it Reinsurance Company of the Year, an award English Wikipedia also records.

Branches, Lloyd’s and a sixtieth birthday.

Korean Re is a reinsurer rather than a consumer brand, and what it sells is capacity. English Wikipedia divides its book into personal lines — long-term, motor and life reinsurance — and commercial lines covering property, marine, casualty and bond business. The company presents its work under two headings on its website, non-life and life reinsurance.

Its network has spread steadily since 2008. The company’s history lists a Dubai liaison office in 2008; Korean Re Underwriting Ltd. at Lloyd’s in London in February 2015; branches in Labuan, Malaysia, and at the Dubai International Financial Centre in 2017; Korean Reinsurance Switzerland AG in Zurich in 2019; a Shanghai branch and a liaison office in Bogotá in 2020; KoreanRe Insurance Services in New Jersey in 2021; and, in January 2026, a branch in the international financial services centre at GIFT City in Gujarat, India. It also lists liaison offices in Tokyo and London.

The company marked its 60th anniversary on 19 March 2023 by unveiling a new corporate identity. On 2 May 2024 The Asia Business Daily reported that the identity, produced with the branding agency Interbrand, had won the main award in the Communication category of the iF Design Award, the prize run by iF International Forum Design in Hanover. According to the paper, the jury praised the way a contrast in font weight expressed both the confidence of a Korean reinsurer and a flexible attitude to risk; a company official said the aim was to show two capabilities a reinsurer needs, professionalism and flexibility.

The overseas push shows in the figures English Wikipedia gives: as of 2015, it says, more than 22 per cent of Korean Re’s gross written premiums came from abroad, earned through the Singapore branch, subsidiaries in Hong Kong and London and a set of liaison offices. The company’s own history records the domestic side of the same story, from a new head office in the Susong-dong district of Seoul in 1984 to a move to an office in Supyo-dong in April 2025, and a financial award from the finance ministry and the Korea Economic Daily in 2001.

In May 2025 The Asia Business Daily reported that Korean Re had received its first rating from Moody’s, an A1 with a stable outlook.

How reinsurers present themselves.

Reinsurers sell to insurance companies rather than to the public, so their brands rarely appear on a high street. What they publish instead is aimed at underwriters, brokers, investors and regulators, and the design tends to follow: sober wordmarks, often built on a short name or an acronym, with a restrained palette that has to sit comfortably on a balance sheet as well as on a conference banner.

Much of a reinsurer’s visible output is research. Catastrophe-model maps of windstorm, earthquake and flood zones, risk-science papers, studies of climate and natural catastrophes and reports on life and health trends do the work that advertising does for consumer brands. They show expertise to clients and give the company a reason to be quoted, and their charts, maps and covers become a large part of how the brand is seen.

The rest is disclosure. Listed reinsurers publish annual reports, solvency and financial-condition reports and investor presentations, and they reprint the ratings given by agencies such as Standard & Poor’s and AM Best. These documents are long, dense and built on tables, so a clear grid, a legible text face and consistent figure styles matter more than display type.

Many reinsurers also add a cultural or scientific side. Client seminars and training programmes bring cedants together, and some groups run foundations: Hannover Re’s, set up in 1991, lends contemporary art to a museum in Hanover, while SCOR has run a foundation for science since 2011. For a designer, the lesson is a register of calm authority, in which a well-set report carries more weight than a slogan.

We serve to protect your future.

Korean Re’s website gives its slogan as “We serve to protect your future,” its vision as “Value-Creating Reinsurance Leader” and a longer-range goal, “Vision 2050,” of becoming a “Global Top-Tier Reinsurer.” The chief executive’s welcome on the site describes the company as a global reinsurer drawing on more than 60 years of experience, and stresses the growing intensity and frequency of natural disasters as a reason for clients to buy reinsurance.

Much of the brand reaches clients through print and research. The company publishes the Korean Re Bulletin, a regular newsletter whose press-centre archive runs from issue 141 in 2013 to issue 199 for April to June 2026, alongside research titles such as The Risk and Life & Health Watch, and an online annual report and fact book. Its head office is in Jung-gu, in central Seoul. Won Jong-gyu became chief executive in June 2013, the company says, and still held the post when The Asia Business Daily reported on the Moody’s rating in 2025.

For a design guide, Korean Re shows how a reinsurer with no consumer products can still treat its identity as a design project, and have it judged as one. Compare Swiss Re and Munich Re, two older reinsurers with their own identities. For this guide we use navy, slate blue and a mist grey with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Korean Re’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.