Korea Life entrusts assets with BNY Mellon

Jul 21, 2009

BNY Mellon Asset Servicing wins the global custody mandate from a rival.

Korea Life Insurance has selected the Bank of New York Mellon (BNY Mellon) Asset Servicing as global custodian for its overseas holdings.

Under the mandate, BNY Mellon Asset Servicing provides Korea Life with a single-source global custody solution. The appointment is only for global custody services, including asset servicing (such as corporate actions and income collections), automated trade processing and reconciliation, online reporting and forecasting, and securities processing.

"After an extensive due diligence process, we chose BNY Mellon because of its financial stability, strong technology reinvestment programme and its proven record in respect of service standards, client focus and relationship management," says Kyung-Ro Lee, executive vice-president at Korea Life.

According to sources, Citi previously provided Korea Life with its global custody services.

The insurance company put out a request for proposal for its global custody needs in January 2009 and officially appointed BNY Mellon at the beginning of July.

Commenting on why Korea Life selected BNY Mellon, Asia-Pacific head of BNY Mellon Asset Servicing Leow Chong-Jin says: "Institutional investors, Korean institutions included, are seeking partners who are well-capitalised, visibly committed to the business of asset servicing for the long term, and have sophisticated practical solutions to help meet the variety of market challenges faced by institutions today. BNY Mellon ticks all the right boxes."

Not included in the mandate are many value-added services that custodians provide clients. At BNY Mellon these include fund servicing, securities lending and transition management.

At the end of 2008, Korea Life's assets totalled $38.6 billion, roughly equal to total assets a year earlier. The firm was ranked number 50 in AsianInvestor's latest top 200 Asian institutional investors list. Korea Ratings rates the insurance company's credit AAA.

Outside South Korea, Korea Life currently has a presence in China, Hong Kong, Japan, the UK, the US and Vietnam.

BNY Mellon has $19.5 trillion in assets under custody and administration globally. The bank has been present in South Korea for over 20 years, opening an asset management representative office in 2008.