Samsung Life Brand Guidelines: From Dongbang Life in 1957 to “Insurance Beyond Insurance”

A 1957 insurer that took the Samsung name.

Samsung Life did not begin with the Samsung name. Korean Wikipedia says the company was founded on 24 April 1957 as Dongbang Life Insurance and traded under that name until July 1989, when it became Samsung Life Insurance. English Wikipedia also dates the founding to 1957, and, citing the company’s own history, says it grew quickly in its first 18 months of operations.

The decisive step came early. Both Wikipedia editions record that the insurer joined the Samsung group in 1963, and English Wikipedia says its growth accelerated after that. It stayed a private company for more than half a century, until it went public in May 2010.

Korean Wikipedia’s timeline shows the company spreading beyond insurance policies into public life. It set up a public-interest foundation in 1982 and a wrestling team in 1983, opened representative offices in Tokyo and New York in 1986, and celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2007. The same timeline lists a retirement community, Noble County, opened in 2001, a mobile sales system for its agents launched in 2008, and a Samsung Family Office opened in 2012; in 2013, Korean Wikipedia adds, the company appeared in Fortune’s Global 500 list of the world’s biggest companies, and English Wikipedia also calls it a Fortune Global 500 company. Its name is carried by sports teams, including a table tennis team and the Yongin Samsung Life Blueminx women’s basketball team, which English Wikipedia also lists.

Its home in Seoul has moved. English Wikipedia describes the headquarters as facing Namdaemun, the historic gate in the centre of the city; Korean Wikipedia records the head office moving to Seocho-dong, in Seocho District, in 2016, and gives that district as the current headquarters.

People, love and a cast of characters.

Samsung Life has given its brand a voice through slogans and characters. Korean Wikipedia records that in 2011 the company launched a brand built on two words, “People, Love” (사람, 사랑), the same year it opened research institutes on insurance finance and on retirement. In 2012 it declared a new statement of its business concept and vision.

Characters carry much of the warmth. According to Korean Wikipedia, the company introduced a character called Bichumi in 2000, used a pair called the Sarangi brothers from 2012, and by 2022 had returned to a renewed Bichumi family of three characters named Harry, Byeolli and Dalli. Korean Wikipedia says they stand for Samsung Life lighting up its customers’ lives.

Since 2024 the company has run a brand campaign under the line “insurance beyond insurance” (보험을 넘어서는 보험), Korean Wikipedia says, presenting the insurer as a business that supports customers across their lives, from health management to retirement planning and asset management, rather than only paying out after something goes wrong. The campaign reached its third year in 2026, when the company added a version built around developers, tied to its work on platforms for older customers, asset management and health care.

That direction is visible in recent news. The Seoul Economic Daily reported on 4 November 2026 that Samsung Life presented a community care model for older adults, called Senior Connected Care, at the AI Expo MARS 2026 at COEX in Seoul, and that it is running a pilot in the Dongtan area with the city of Hwaseong through December, working with public health centres and regional hospitals. English Wikipedia lists the company’s principal products as life insurance, health insurance and annuities.

Design and documentation.

Asian life insurers tend to present themselves in a recognisable way. Wordmarks are usually short and set in warm, open sans-serif letters, often a single company name or a set of initials that can sit on an app icon, a branch fascia and a policy document without changing. Palettes lean on red, orange and blue, colours that read clearly on screens and signs, with plenty of white space around them.

Photography does much of the emotional work. Families, couples, children and older parents appear far more often than buildings or products, and health and everyday activity are recurring themes. Product pages are usually organised by need rather than by policy name: protection, savings, health and retirement, each with its own short explanation and a route to an adviser or an online quote.

Two audiences sit side by side on most of these sites. Customers are offered apps, service hotlines, online claims and, increasingly, wellness and senior-care programmes linked to their cover. Prospective agents are offered recruitment pages that describe training, career paths and the role of the adviser, since agents and partner banks remain important sales channels for many of these companies.

Behind the consumer pages sits a heavier layer of corporate publishing. Listed insurers produce annual reports, interim results and sustainability reports, often in two or more languages, and these documents carry the most formal version of the identity: the full logo, a restricted palette, long-form charts and governance pages. For a designer, studying both layers together shows how one identity stretches from a friendly app screen to a dense, regulated report.

Offices abroad, a listing at home.

Samsung Life looked abroad early. Korean Wikipedia lists representative offices in Tokyo and New York from 1986 and Beijing from 1995, a joint-venture life insurer in Thailand, Siam Samsung, set up in 1997, and a Chinese joint venture that opened in 2005. English Wikipedia gives the same dates for the Thai and Chinese ventures.

The listing came on 12 May 2010, when the shares began trading on the Korea Exchange, both Wikipedia editions record; English Wikipedia cites The Wall Street Journal of that day. Samsung Life remains within the Samsung group: Korean Wikipedia, using the company’s 2020 filing, names Samsung C&T and related parties as the largest shareholder group and lists Samsung Asset Management among its subsidiaries, alongside insurance agency and claims-adjusting companies.

It continues to raise funds abroad. ChosunBiz reported on 27 October 2026 that Samsung Life had issued 30-year hybrid capital securities on overseas markets, with roughly half taken by long-term investors from the United States and Europe; the company said it would use the funds to strengthen its capital position, keep a stable shareholder-return policy and build growth for the medium to long term.

For a design guide, Samsung Life shows how a company that took its group’s name in 1989 built its own warmth through a slogan, a family of characters and a long-running campaign line. Compare Hanwha Life, another Seoul life insurer within a Korean business group, and AIA, a pan-Asian insurer with a business in Korea. For this guide we use blue, navy and a warm light yellow with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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