Korea Post's savings arm earns 8.45% return in H1

Korea Post's savings arm earned an 8.45% return on investments in the first half of this year, broadly in line with the average rate of return reported by other major South Korean pension funds during the same period. 

Double-digit returns from equities and alternative assets offset flat to negative gains from fixed-income investments, according to Korea Post's announcement on Oct. 8.

Compared with benchmarks, however, both domestic and overseas equities missed their benchmarks in the January-June period, while alternative and fixed-income assets outperformed.

The proportions of overseas equities and alternatives rose to their highest level in five years for the savings arm as of end-June.

Asset type	H1 return	H1 benchmark
Domestic equities	14%	15.05%
Overseas equities	17.03%	17.58%
Alternatives	15.62%	5.7%
Domestic fixed income	0.34%	-0.35%
Overseas fixed income	-2.23%	-3.27%

In the entire year of 2020, Korea Post's savings unit logged an average 4.29% return. It manages 83.7 trillion won ($70 billion) in assets as of end-June.

Last month, it netted slightly over 1 trillion won from the block sale of shares in the country's largest internet-only lender KakaoBank. The state-run body achieved about a tenfold return from the pre-IPO investment in six years.

Write to Jae-fu Kim at hu@hankyung.com
Yeonhee Kim edited this article.