Hanwha General Insurance will launch Korea's first digital non-life insurer, called Carrot, the company has announced.

Carrot has KRW85bn ($72m) in capital. Hanwha General Insurance is the largest shareholder with a 75.1% stake, followed by SK Telecom (9.9%), Altos Fund (9.9%) and Hyundai Motor (5.1%), reported The Korea Times.

Hanwha has established Carrot at a time when more players are moving into online insurance distribution. An increasing number of FinTech firms are seeking entry into the Korean insurance market, aiming to attract customers to their online platforms.

For example, KakaoPay, a FinTech unit of the nation's largest messenger platform KakaoTalk, said it will start selling insurance products from the second half of the year. "We are also reviewing our plan to launch our own general agencies (GAs) to sell insurance products online," KakaoPay CEO Ryu Young-joon said.

Rainist, operator of online asset management app Banksalad, has recently set up GAs to sell insurance products. It regularly collects customers' medical checkup results from the National Health Insurance Corporation in order to introduce insurance products. Viva Republica, operator of peer-to-peer online money transfer app Toss, established GAs last year.

There are at present also numerous mobile apps allowing customers to compare the prices and coverage of insurance packages from different insurers.