Kyowon Life climbs to No. 2 in funeral services with 'life care' strategy

"We will not limit ourselves to funeral services — we will build a business model around everything that can help customers throughout their entire lives."

According to the Korea Fair Trade Commission's Tuesday disclosure on the state of the funeral services industry, Kyowon Life recorded total prepaid contract assets of approximately 1.74 trillion won ($1.12 billion), overtaking Boram Group's 1.68 trillion won to claim second place in the sector. Woori Freed Life leads the industry with 2.97 trillion won, while the race for second has grown increasingly competitive. Kyowon Life reached the No. 2 position just 15 years after entering the market, and its growth shows no sign of slowing. Behind that rise is a business model that sets it apart from traditional funeral services companies — a "life care" strategy that extends services across a customer's entire life cycle, encompassing travel, education, wellness and healthcare, rather than focusing solely on funerals.

Seo Dong-hyuk, CEO of Kyowon Life, said the word "sangjo" — the Korean term for funeral services — does not simply mean funerals but is shorthand for "mutual aid." "Our vision of sangjo is being there for customers at every moment they need help," he said in a recent interview. Until just a few years ago, competition in the funeral services industry centered on who could sign up the most members. Seo concluded, however, that products requiring customers to wait decades for a single funeral service would struggle to win consumers over.

"Where traditional funeral services companies focused on a single 'dot' — the funeral — Kyowon Life wanted to build a business that connects a customer's life as one continuous 'line,'" he said. He added: "I believed that true mutual aid means staying connected through every important moment in a customer's life — marriage, childbirth, children's education, health management, travel, retirement planning and, finally, the funeral."

Kyowon Life expanded its product lineup to allow customers to convert their plans into travel, wedding, education and healthcare services, while continuously adding membership perks and life care benefits after enrollment. That strategy allowed the company to leapfrog established players with decades in the business. "We broadened the range of ways customers can use their plans so they can enjoy real benefits in their lives right now — and that resonated with what customers actually wanted," Seo said, explaining the company's growth.

Kyowon Life has also drawn in younger customers through a bundled product developed with LG Electronics that offers home appliance purchase benefits. Unlike traditional funeral services plans — where customers felt little tangible benefit until a death occurred — the company restructured its offerings so members can enjoy practical perks from the moment they sign up. Funeral services products had long carried an image of being for middle-aged and older consumers, but Kyowon Life repositioned its approach by targeting newlyweds and customers in their 30s and 40s as future clients. The strategy is to create an initial touchpoint through home appliance bundles, then connect customers to life-cycle-appropriate services such as children's education, language study abroad and travel.

"We are thinking about what services can keep benefiting customers through the journey from newlywed life to having children and then educating them," Seo said. "We believed we could differentiate ourselves from other funeral services companies by drawing on the strengths of Kyowon Group, which has deep roots in education."

The company is designing products in collaboration with a range of affiliates — spanning education, travel, home appliances, hotels and wellness — so that customers can experience the value of their plans in their everyday lives. A "senior month-long stay" program is one example, born out of a partnership with the group's travel affiliate.

"Funeral services used to be a product that prepared only for a future funeral — now it needs to become a service that also manages your life in the present," Seo said. "Our goal is to shed the heavy, conservative image of funeral services and establish ourselves as a familiar life care brand."

Kyowon Life is also differentiating itself in post-funeral services. Where traditional funeral services effectively ended their relationship with customers once the funeral was complete, Kyowon Life is extending its service scope to include helping bereaved families return to daily life. Representative offerings include a "mind care" program to support the psychological recovery of bereaved families and "Pause Travel," a healing program built around travel. The company also plans to introduce programs that help families commemorate the deceased and share memories together.

Seo said he expects the nature of competition in the funeral services industry to change. He argued that chasing growth in membership numbers and prepaid asset volume alone — as companies did in the past — can no longer guarantee sustained expansion. Financial soundness and customer satisfaction, he said, will determine who comes out ahead, as companies must be able to reliably deliver on the services they have promised.

Kyowon Life's strategy is to build a long-term asset management framework on the foundation of customer prepayments and channel the returns back to customers as benefits, creating a virtuous cycle. Rather than simply signing up as many new members as possible, the company is focused on building a structure in which existing customers maintain their contracts and continue using services over time. Kyowon Life's view is that "genuine customers" who stay enrolled matter more than one-time sign-ups. "Our monthly growth rate in prepaid assets is higher than that of our competitors," Seo said. "I believe it is possible that we could overtake the No. 1 player sometime after 2030."

Seo also sees South Korea's entry into a super-aged society as a new opportunity for the funeral services industry. Kyowon Life plans to respond to that shift by deepening synergies with its affiliates. The idea is for the group's education, travel and lifestyle businesses to co-design funeral services products from the planning stage, so customers can experience benefits across their entire life cycle.

"In the past, even within Kyowon Group, funeral services were seen as a separate business — now it is becoming a business that manages customers' lives together," Seo said. "Going forward, we will continue to create new services through inter-affiliate synergies that traditional funeral services companies have never been able to offer."