Toss Securities, KakaoPay Securities and Kiwoom Securities, which grew through stock brokerage, are stepping up efforts to target the pension market. Their strategy is to turn existing trading clients into long-term wealth management clients and complement a brokerage-centred structure in which earnings fluctuate with stock trading value.

As of 2025 year-end, accumulated assets in retirement pensions and pension savings were 501.4 trillion won and 198.2 trillion won, respectively, totalling 699.6 trillion won, the financial investment industry said on July 31.

In particular, accumulated assets in pension savings funds rose 50.7 percent from a year earlier to 61.3 trillion won. Demand is rising for people to manage pensions themselves using exchange-traded funds (ETFs), opening the market to mobile and online-based brokerages as well.

Toss Securities on July 24 launched a pension savings account, its first tax-saving product. Clients can contribute up to 18 million won a year, and tax credits of 13.2 to 16.5 percent apply to up to 6 million won depending on income level.

The launch is seen as a move to diversify its revenue structure, which is concentrated on overseas stock trading. Of Toss Securities' 475.3 billion won in custody fee revenue in 2025, custody fees from foreign currency securities accounted for 449.4 billion won, or 94.5 percent.

A key task is to increase long-term assets held through pension savings and later expand services to other wealth management products such as individual savings accounts (ISAs).

A Toss Securities official said, "We aim to provide a pension investment experience with convenience and stability throughout the entire process from account opening to operation and management so that customers can enjoy long-term asset building and a healthy investing experience."

KakaoPay Securities has secured scale in the pension savings market earlier. After launching its pension savings service in November 2024, it surpassed 500,000 accounts as of May 4. Its ISA, launched in November 2025, also exceeded 300,000 accounts.

The average age of KakaoPay Securities' pension savings subscribers was tallied at 43. People in their 30s and 40s accounted for 59.47 percent, indicating that customers familiar with mobile services flowed in.

Among pension savings subscribers, about 120,000 customers opened an ISA as well, or 24 percent of the total. About 150,000 customers opened additional accounts including stock accounts, accounting for 28 percent.

The process of transferring pensions from other financial institutions or moving matured ISA funds into pension savings can also be handled on mobile. It also offers a function to convert past contributions that did not receive tax credits into current-year contributions and apply for a tax refund.

KakaoPay Securities is also expanding its business beyond pensions and ISAs. By obtaining an investment dealing business licence this month, it laid the groundwork to broaden revenue sources into initial public offering (IPO) lead managing and underwriting, retail bond trading, sales and trading (S&T), and ETF liquidity provision (LP).

KakaoPay Securities CEO Hocheol Shin (신호철) said, "We are seeing a pattern where transactions that start with one product expand to other products."

Kiwoom Securities has entered the retirement pension market beyond pension savings. After starting defined benefit (DB), defined contribution (DC) and individual retirement pension (IRP) services on June 1, it surpassed 100 billion won in accumulated assets as of June 24. About 96 percent of IRP subscribers were existing Kiwoom Securities trading clients.

Kiwoom Securities waived management fees and asset management fees for the first year of enrolment across DB, DC and IRP. It enabled real-time trading of retirement pension ETFs on its mobile trading system (MTS) and applied recurring investment and automatic surveillance order functions. It also operates a service in which workers request their companies to introduce retirement pensions, and consultations and contracts proceed without face-to-face meetings.

Brokerage competitiveness remains the core of Kiwoom Securities' performance. Its stock commission revenue in the second quarter this year was 451.9 billion won, up 178.3 percent from a year earlier. Consolidated net profit for the same period rose 119.4 percent to 680.6 billion won.

Still, Kiwoom Securities' average daily trading value in May rose 51.1 percent from the previous month to 42 trillion won, while its retail market share fell 0.5 percentage points to 24.7 percent. That means trading value growth is lifting earnings, but there is a need to prepare for market share competition and the possibility of a decline in trading value.

The scope of the three companies' pension businesses differs. Toss Securities and KakaoPay Securities are targeting demand for personal pensions through pension savings accounts. Kiwoom Securities operates DB, DC and IRP as a retirement pension business operator.

Competitiveness is expected to be determined by accumulated assets, actual usage rates and investment returns, rather than simple account numbers.

As a latecomer, Toss Securities needs to secure early accumulated assets, and KakaoPay Securities needs to connect its 500,000 accounts to actual growth in assets under management. Kiwoom Securities' task is to expand corporate DB and DC contracts beyond converting existing stock clients to IRPs.

KakaoPay Securities CEO Shin said, "We are seeing a pattern where transactions that start with one product expand to other products," adding that it will develop into a platform that provides asset management across the entire life cycle on mobile.