KB Financial Group, a holding company of South Korea's top lender Kookmin Bank, planned to make a final bidding for the local unit of global insurance giant ING Groep, sources said Monday.

"KB Financial plans to submit binding bids on Monday for ING Grope's South Korean insurance unit later in the day. AIA Group is also expected to submit a second-round bid for the unit," an industry source, who declined to be identified because the deal is confidential, told Xinhua.

KB Financial was known to hold a board of directors' meeting last Friday to decide on its final bidding price for the ING Life Insurance, the local unit affiliated with the Asia-Pacific subsidiary of the Dutch-based ING Groep. The final acquisition price was forecast to be set at around 3.5 trillion won (3.05 billion U.S. dollars).

Head of KB Financial confirmed its plan to bid for the unit. " As planned, we will bid for the life insurer. But, I'm not confident (that KB will win the deal). If we bid an expensive price, we can buy it, but we'd like to buy it at an appropriate price," Euh Yoon-dae was quoted as saying in an interview with Yonhap News Agency on Friday.

ING plans to pick a preferred bidder for the South Korean life insurance unit by the end of this month. The Dutch-based firm is seeking to sell its Asian life insurance and asset management units in a bid to repay bailout funds that it received from the Dutch government during the 2008 global financial crisis.

Market watchers said if KB Financial acquires the ING's local unit, the fifth-largest life insurer in South Korea, it can lift its ranking in the country's life insurance industry to fourth or fifth. It will be the same story for AIA.

Meanwhile, KB Financial was reported to weigh whether to bid for the 57 percent stakes in the nation's largest banking group Woori Finance Holdings. "We're looking (into the Woori bid) with interest. But, nothing has been decided yet," Euh was quoted as saying in an interview with Yonhap.

The South Korean government bailed out Woori Finance more than a decade ago. After two failed sale attempts, the government recently launched its third attempt to privatize it and planned to receive letters of intent (LOI) from potential buyers by the end- July.

A senior official at the financial watchdog was quoted as saying in an interview with Maeil Business Newspaper that KB Financial and a couple of private equity funds (PEFs) were known to take part in the preliminary bids for Woori Finance.

Regarding this, an official at the KB Financial told Xinhua that "nothing has been pushed or processed in a concrete way yet."