Insurance markets 2017: 80 percent of growth comes from emerging economies

Property-casualty set the tone last year: At 5.0 percent, it not only grew almost twice as fast as life insurance in 2017, but also recorded the largest increase since 2012. Almost all regions contributed to the positive premium development; nevertheless, the growth discrepancy between emerging and industrialized countries remains striking: while premiums in the former soared by 11.6 percent, mature markets only managed an increase of 3.5 percent. Western Europe, however, is also lagging significantly behind this figure: premium growth in 2017 reached only 2.0 percent - but still the second highest value since 2007; in the previous year, the Western European markets recorded zero growth.

The significantly lower global growth in life insurance premiums in 2017 (+2.8 percent) is primarily due to the still weak development in Western Europe, where almost 30 percent of global premium income is written. After a minus of 2.2% in 2016, there still is a red zero in 2017. At the end of last year, the regional premium volume was thus still almost 5 percent below the pre-crisis peak in 2007; insurance penetration fell from 5.6 percent to 4.4 percent during this period.

'Although the life insurance markets have become significantly more volatile in recent years, the trend is clear - and disturbing,' commented Michaela Grimm, economist at Allianz Research. 'While the unrelenting demographic change leaves no doubt about the necessity of private provision, long-term savings efforts are obviously decreasing. The severe economic crisis in many European countries is certainly one reason for this. But the ECB's low-interest policy also plays an inglorious role here. It is therefore time to exit the crisis mode - in the interest of the younger generation, which will be much more dependent on private reserves in old age than the current generation of pensioners.'