South Korean insurers collected 23.6 trillion won ($21.3 billion) in premium sales with their partners in the financial industry last year, double the size from the introduction of the so-called bancassurance model a decade ago, business sources said Monday.

According to the sources in the financial and insurance industries, banks claimed the largest share of insurance sales made through financial channels ― known as bancassurance ― in fiscal 2012, with 16.6 trillion won or 70.5 percent of the total.

Bancassurance was first introduced in South Korea in 2003 and has since been growing robustly ― so much so that the nation’s financial watchdog began cracking down on excessive competition among commercial banks in 2011.

Agricultural cooperatives were the second largest seller of bancassurance products, clinching 21.1 percent of the total premium sales last year. Securities firms and savings banks followed with 8.1 percent and 0.2 percent, respectively.

Life insurance policies were the most popular items sold through these transactions, with 20.9 trillion won in sales and 10 times that of property insurance policies. Analysts attributed the gap to the simplicity with which claims could be filed with the former type of products.

The largest benefactor of bancassurance has been the small and medium-sized life insurers. These insurers, whose sales had been declining prior to the introduction of the model in 2003, saw their market shares increase to 20 percent in 2007 and cap off last year with a 33.9 percent market share.

By contrast, market giants such as Samsung Life Insurance Co., Hanwha Life Insurance Co. and Kyobo Life Insurance Co. declined in their collective shares, from 72 percent in 2003 to the low-50 percent level in 2012. (Yonhap News)