Seventh meeting with The Reinsurance Tutorials, episode #7 - Season 4
Hi everybody 👋
Today is the launch of the 7th episode of the Reinsurance Tutorials season 4!
We will talk about "LATAM Life/ Non-Life Reinsurance: Assessing Pandemic Impacts Masterclass".
This topic will be addressed by our Arundo Re experts Olivier COLLIGNON et Georges GUZMAN.
Let’s start! ⏬
[Olivier]: Hello, from Paris. I’m Olivier Collignon, Vice President for personal insurance, for Life, Health and Personal Accident for Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula. In this short video, we’re going to share our vision of the insurance and reinsurance market in personal insurance. We’ll talk about emerging trends and, finally, our portfolio diversification strategy through Life and Non-Life reinsurance synergy.
[Georges]: I’m Georges Guzman, regional Life and Health Underwriter. We’ll explore the importance of socioeconomic factors in the penetration of the life insurance market, and the impacts and changes we are seeing as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Latin America is a fertile territory and is experiencing accelerated growth, subject to innovations in business models. It is the fastest growing regional insurance market in the world.
[Olivier]: From 2011 to 2022, the Life insurance segment trebled. In the last five years, the average annual growth rate was above 11%. However, it only represents 2% of the global market. But the sustained and significant growth indicates vast untapped market potential.
[Georges]: Another important point: it is a highly profitable market, if measured by its financial profitability – or return on equity – around 22%, compared with 8.8% globally.
[Olivier]: However, there are still many structural challenges, like a fragmented market and socioeconomic factors such as high informality rates in the labour market. For the region to bridge the gap between its current insurance penetration and those of more mature markets, avenues for growth need to be created that suit the region’s own characteristics. There is close correlation between Life insurance leaders and banking leaders, now that they often belong to the same conglomerate. There is a similar relationship between bank use and access to insurance.
[Georges]: Whenever the bank-using population operating in the formal sector increases, insurance becomes increasingly necessary. Meanwhile, insurers are seeking growth and efficiency, as well as products that could satisfy demand from neglected populations.
[Olivier]: With regard to reinsurance, we see a certain amount of diversity in reinsurance structures. While some markets are keeping a considerable degree of proportional cessions, others are more subject to non-proportional cessions, which has led to some inefficiency in the context of the pandemic. Sure enough, the increasing profitability of the industry was affected during the COVID-19 pandemic, but profitability itself remained positive, including until 2021. In fact, the market demonstrated remarkable resilience.
[Georges]: However, 2022 margins remained below pre-pandemic levels. One reason for this restricted growth in profitability was the increase in claims, which affected policy prices. Another explanation was the inflationary context. For example, medical inflation increased in some countries to over three times the consumer price index, which significantly influenced the increase in healthcare costs and profitability, without being fully transferred to insurance prices.
[Olivier]: Subsequently, at the beginning of the pandemic, we observed greater demand from our partners for proportional cession structures in general, and quota share specifically, or mixed structures with a stop-loss component.
[Georges]: On the other hand, we are also seeing a constant and sustained increase in demand for catastrophe capacity, specifically in some of the region’s countries.
[Olivier]: Our company operates thanks to the collaboration of the teams, with a global vision of relations with our business partners and business access channels. It allows us to consolidate relations, so both parties benefit from a stability that matches the cycles specific to each line of insurance.
See you soon for the next episode 👋
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