Insurance firms do diverse pro bono work

Private insurance companies have spent the recent chilly days doing pro bono work and giving back to local communities.

About 30 workers from Samsung Fire and Marine Insurance threw a party on Friday afternoon for the 100-day-old celebrations for the baby boy of a poor, single mom living in a welfare shelter in the Seodaemungu district of Seoul.

They invited some 100 colleagues and shelter dwellers to the event to brighten up the atmosphere. The party was held in the cafeteria of the insurer’s headquarters in downtown Seoul.

LIG Non-life Insurance signed an agreement with the Korea Scoliosis Foundation on Monday to pay the medical bills and sponsor physical exams for scoliosis patients. The signing took place in Chungeum Hall, a facility for people with hearing disabilities, in the southern Seoul district of Gangnam-gu.

Scoliosis is a rare irreversible medical condition in which a person’s spine is curved from side to side.

Ahead of the signing, LIG Insurance donated a medical bus complete with scoliosis testing equipment and provided free exams.

After concluding the deal, about 30 executives and employees, including CEO Kim Byeong-heon, volunteered to serve lunch in the facility.

On Saturday, some 30 employees from Mirae Asset Life Insurance and their family members delivered 2,000 charcoal bricks for free to underprivileged people living in Sanggye-dong, Nowon-gu, Seoul.

Mirae Asset Life said that about 200 executives of Mirae Asset Group will give their time to the voluntary delivery of charcoal bricks to the needy on Nov. 14.

Its employees and executives will hand over free charcoal bricks to seniors living alone in poverty, child breadwinners and low-income homes from Nov. 19-21. They will also give piggy banks in which they have saved money since May to the Community Chest of Korea, a nationwide charitable fund-raiser. This is the third year in a row the insurer has helped the needy pay for heating bills in the winter with the piggy banks.

AIA Life Insurance donated 130 million won to the Ewha Womans University Medical Center on Monday. The money will be spent to pay hospital bills for poor women with cancer. The insurer will also sponsor cancer diagnosis for underserved women in the neighborhoods around the medical center.

By Chun Sung-woo (swchun@heraldcorp.com)