The sales of non-life insurance products via the Internet soared last year, as local insurance firms rushed to roll out cheap and online-only products to woo customers, data showed Monday.

According to the General Insurance Association of Korea, local non-life insurance companies raised a total of 1.4 trillion won ($1.19 billion) in premiums by selling products through the Internet last year, up 34.3 percent from a year earlier.

The growth rate is far higher than the 1.3 percent on-year rise in overall insurance premiums collected during the cited period, the data showed.

The 2016 tally also marks a sharp rise from 664 billion won at the end of September 2014, they showed.

Online-only insurance products are usually cheaper than those sold in face-to-face marketing, and local insurance firms launched a unified online platform to sell their products in November 2015, which facilitated the sales of such products.

The data showed that local insurance firms raised 51.2 trillion won in premiums from off-line sales of insurance products last year, accounting for 89.5 percent of all premiums raised last year. (Yonhap)