Photo by: Oskar Alexanderson
South Korea's two biggest insurance names are reportedly closing in on deals that would hand one of them full control of a well-known Lloyd's specialty carrier and make the other the largest shareholder in a major US retirement group. Samsung, Centerbridge Partners and Principal Financial Group have all stayed quiet publicly, and nothing has been signed. But according to breaking news in Seoul, this would be the largest piece of outbound M&A a Korean financial firm has ever attempted, worth somewhere between 7 and 9 trillion won, or roughly $5.1bn to $6.6bn depending on how each leg of the deal lands.
The story was first reported by the Korea Economic Daily earlier today, citing unnamed banking and industry sources, and has since been picked up by the Seoul Economic Daily and KED Global. The figures below should be read as reported estimates, not confirmed terms.
The London leg of the story involves Canopius, the Lloyd's specialty and reinsurance group that covers risks including kidnap and ransom, fine art and terrorism. Samsung Fire & Marine already owns 40% of the business, a stake built up over three rounds since 2019, the most recent of which Insurance Business covered in 2025.
Sources cited in the Korean press say Samsung Fire is now negotiating to buy out the remaining shares held by a consortium led by US private equity firm Centerbridge Partners, taking Canopius to full ownership at a price in the region of $2bn once a control premium is added.
Samsung Fire's own filings, as cited by the Seoul Economic Daily, show Canopius generating a return on equity of around 20% and contributing about ₩168.5 billion (roughly $122m) in equity-method profit in the first half of 2026 alone, more than a tenth of the parent group's total net income for the period. Samsung Fire is said to see full ownership as a way into higher-value specialty and reinsurance business across the Lloyd's market, the US, the Netherlands and Singapore, all territories where Canopius already operates.
The second leg is bigger. Samsung Life is said to be pursuing a roughly 15% stake in Principal Financial Group, the Iowa-based retirement and asset management group, in a deal reportedly worth $3.6bn to $4.4bn. That would push Samsung Life past Vanguard, currently PFG's largest holder at just over 12%, into the top shareholder spot. PFG manages close to $781bn in assets and ranks among the top three providers in the US 401(k) market. Korean reports suggest the draw is PFG's alternative-asset capability, from US commercial property to infrastructure, plus the option to bring PFG's results into Samsung Life's own consolidated accounts depending on how the stake is structured.
Two of Canada's largest insurers have already run close to this playbook. Fairfax Financial, the Toronto-based holding company led by Prem Watsa, bought Lloyd's specialty insurer Brit PLC outright in 2015 for roughly $1.88bn, framing the deal at the time as a way to secure a top-five position at Lloyd's. The logic tracks what's reportedly driving Samsung Fire toward full ownership of Canopius now: buy your way to scale and control in a market where you already have a foothold, rather than staying a minority partner.
Intact Financial did something comparable in 2021, teaming up with Denmark's Tryg on a combined £7.2bn takeover of UK insurer RSA. Intact's own share of that deal was £3bn, in exchange for RSA's Canadian, UK and international operations, while Tryg paid £4.2bn for the Sweden and Norway business. It gave Intact its first meaningful presence in the UK market, the market Samsung Fire is now trying to consolidate a position in through Canopius.
There's a further Canadian connection specific to the Brit deal. After Fairfax completed the purchase, it sold roughly 30% of Brit to the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS), one of Canada's large pension plans. Canadian capital, not just Canadian carriers, already has real exposure to the kind of Lloyd's businesses Samsung is now trying to buy outright.
Read next: Samsung Fire and Marine expands investment in Canopius — the 2025 deal that got Samsung Fire to 40%
Both moves trace back to Samsung Electronics. Samsung Life and Samsung Fire together hold roughly a tenth of the chipmaker's shares, and a sharp rise in dividends during the current semiconductor upcycle is said to have left both insurers with cash to deploy. Sources in the Korean coverage also point to a more direct factor: Samsung Electronics chairman Jay Y. Lee has reportedly urged the group's financial affiliates to pursue overseas M&A more aggressively, a shift for two companies that have traditionally preferred minority stakes and partnerships over outright acquisitions.
Other Korean insurers are moving the same way. DB Insurance completed its $1.65bn purchase of Florida-based specialty insurer Fortegra in May 2026. If both Samsung deals go through, they would eclipse that as the largest cross-border acquisitions ever made by a South Korean financial company, putting Samsung alongside Fairfax and Intact on the list of non-UK insurers that have bought their way into a serious Lloyd's or London market position.
A full Canopius buyout would trigger a formal change-of-control review in London. Under Lloyd's own rules, anyone acquiring 10% or more of the shares or voting rights in a managing agent needs prior approval from Lloyd's, the PRA and the FCA, a process that runs through detailed due diligence before Lloyd's signs off on financing, group structure and investors alongside the two regulators. Samsung Fire has already been through versions of this process with its earlier stake increases, but moving from 40% to full ownership is a bigger step up in scrutiny than adding another slice of a minority holding.
Neither deal has a signed agreement yet, and both would still need to clear negotiation, due diligence and regulatory approval in the UK, US and South Korea before anything closes.
