02/03/2019
News MiddleEast28 Feb 2019
Asia Pacific:Mutual & cooperative insurance mart grows by 21% in 10 years from 2007
By MEIR team | 28 Feb 2019
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Global Takaful
Asia and Oceania was the only region where the growth of the mutual insurance market in the 10 years from 2007 did not exceed that of the total market. Mutual insurers in the region collectively grew by 21.0% between 2007 and 2017, which was weaker than the total market expansion of 77%, according to the "Global Mutual Market Share 10" report by the International Cooperative and Mutual Insurance Federation (ICMIF).
In Asia and Oceania, the mutual and cooperative sector experienced a loss in market share, falling from 19.4% in 2007 (and a peak of 22.6% in 2011) to 13.2% in 2017. The decline in mutual share in the region can be attributed to: the depreciation of the Japanese yen, which adversely impacted the regional mutual figures due to a larger contribution of Japanese mutual business; and the emergence of China as one of the largest insurance markets in the world, where mutual pe*******on is currently very low.
Since 2007, the 10-year growth of the mutual sector exceeded that of the total insurance industry in the other four regions:
Between 2007 and 2017, Europe was the only region to report negative growth (-14.8%) in premiums for the total insurance industry, while in stark contrast, the mutual insurance sector posted a positive growth of 14.8%.
North American mutuals also recorded stronger growth in premiums (+48.6%), well ahead of the total industry’s regional premium growth (+11.7%).
Although Africa was the smallest region in terms of total mutual premiums written in 2017, it recorded the strongest regional growth for mutuals since 2007, with a 170% premium increase, and significantly outperforming the total industry average (+18.8%).
The Latin American mutual sector also doubled in size between 2007 and 2017 and reported faster growth (+113%) than the rest of the market (+88%).
Global
The 10-year ICMIF research highlights that the mutual and cooperative insurance market has been the fastest growing part of the global insurance industry in the 10-year period since the global financial crisis.
Premium income of the global mutual and cooperative insurance sector grew by a total of 30% compared to 17% growth of the total global insurance industry. As a result, the global market share of mutual and cooperative insurers rose from 24.0% in 2007 to 26.7% in 2017.
In her foreword in the report, Ms Hilde Vernaillen, chairperson of ICMIF, commented on how the start of the last global financial crisis acted as the catalyst for growth for the cooperative and mutual insurance model: “At this financially volatile time, as consumer trust, consumer spending and interest rates plummeted, the cooperative/mutual insurance sector began to emerge, even flourish, outperforming the insurance industry average and capturing more market share. Additional qualitative research carried out by ICMIF during this period suggests that this positive performance is linked to consumers’ preference for providers that can demonstrate characteristics most commonly associated with cooperatives and mutuals: trustworthiness, security and service excellence.”
The ICMIF report also shows that 922m members/policyholders were served by mutual/cooperative insurance companies in 2017, a 13% growth over 2012. The growing positive socio-economic impact of the mutual and cooperative industry was also evident in the increase in the number of people employed by the sector, which reached 1.16m in 2017, a 24% growth since 2007. There were over 5,000 mutual and cooperative insurance companies operating in 77 countries in 2017
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