The delinquency ratio of loans by South Korean insurance companies inched up in November from a month earlier mainly due to a rise in overdue corporate debts, the financial watchdog said Tuesday.

The bad loan ratio of life and nonlife insurers stood at 0.72 percent in November, up 0.03 percentage point from the previous month, according to the Financial Supervisory Service.

A delinquent insurance loan refers to a debt that has been overdue in both principal and interest for more than a month.

The regulator cited an increase in the ratio of overdue corporate loans, which came in at 1.11 percent in November, up 0.12 percentage point from the previous month's tally.

But a slight drop in the delinquency ratio of household loans lent support to keeping the overall bad loan ratio at a stable level, the FSS added.

The overdue loan ratio of property financing, the troubled sector with the highest bad loan figure, rose 0.78 percentage point to 6.28 percent as of end-November.

The outstanding loans extended by insurers totaled 127.1 trillion won ($117 billion) at the end of November, up 1.2 percent, or 1.5 trillion won, from a month ago.

Household loans extended by insurers grew 900 billion won to 83 trillion won, and those lent to companies increased 600 billion won to 44.1 trillion won over the cited period, the FSS said. (Yonhap News)