SEOUL, Aug. 30 (Xinhua) -- Investment by South Korean financial institutions into foreign securities doubled in the past two years on strong demand for foreign bonds, central bank data showed Wednesday.
Financial institutions, including insurers, brokerages and asset management firms, invested a total of 210.07 billion U.S. dollars in foreign securities as of end-June, up 17.13 billion dollars from three months earlier, according to the Bank of Korea (BOK).
It topped 200 billion dollars for the first time, after surpassing 100 billion dollars in March 2015. The institutional investment in foreign securities more than doubled for the past two years.
The holdings of foreign securities began to increase in 2015, after staying flat since the 2008 global financial crisis.
As the BOK kept its benchmark interest rate at an all-time low of 1.25 percent since June last year, local institutions rushed to purchase high-yield assets overseas.
Local insurers expanded investment in foreign bonds as the U.S. Federal Reserve raised its policy rate to a range of 1.00-1.25 percent.
The institutional ownership of foreign bonds came in at 109.38 billion dollars as of end-June, up 10.9 billion dollars from three months earlier.
The holdings of foreign stocks increased 5.61 billion dollars to 58.12 billion dollars in the same period.
The ownership of the so-called Korean Paper inched up 0.63 billion dollars to 42.57 billion dollars. The Korean Paper refers to foreign currency-denominated bonds issued overseas by domestic institutions and the government.
