All articles by LII editorial
LII editorial
Poland confirms growth status in style
Exceeding all but the most optimistic forecasts, Polands life insurance market set a cracking growth pace in 2008 with a number of market players producing spectacular premium income growth Shrugging off deteriorating economic conditions Polands life insurance market continued to grow apace in 2008 with gross written premium income bounding ahead by 52.8 percent to PLN38.99 billion ($12.2 billion)
First-quarter new business nosedives in UK
Recession in the UK economy took a heavy toll on new life insurance business in the first quarter of 2009 with virtually all categories recording sharp year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter declines, reports the Association of British Insurers. Single premium accumulation and protection new business, traditionally the largest source of new premium income, came under significant pressure in the first quarter of 2009 Compared with the first quarter of 2008, new premium income slumped 43 percent from £16.8 billion ($27 billion) to £9.65 billion while compared with new business of £11.7 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008 the decline was 18 percent.
Prevention is better than cure
Increasingly wellness programmes aimed at encouraging healthy lifestyles are being offered by health insurers but often the question is asked: do they yield any positive results? The answer is yes in the case of both healthy and chronically ill policyholders, Emile Stipp, a fellow of the UK Institute of Actuaries told delegates to the Actuarial Professions Health and Care Conference held in Glasgow in May. Stipp based his conclusion on data from more than 900,000 members of South African insurer Discoverys Vitality Wellness Programme, a pioneer in the concept of programmes and the largest wellness programme of its kind in the world.
Fitch takes a dim view on Japan
In a sweeping appraisal of Japans life insurance industry, rating agency Fitch has downgraded nine of the countrys 23 domestically-controlled mutual and non-mutual life insurers One of the major factors influencing the rating actions is what Fitch termed its increasingly negative view of the exposure of the Japanese life insurance industry to equity risk
A £40bn problem could get far worse
If British companies burdened with financial uncertainty presented by defined benefit (DB) pension schemes needed reason to consider the buyout option, it was provided in spectacular fashion in May. Among the top 200 companies, Aon Consulting, a unit of insurance broker and risk management service provider Aon, estimates that the combined DB pensions accounting deficit soared from £8 billion ($13 billion) at the start of the month to £40 billion by month-end. Driving the increase were falls in corporate bond yields and increases in expected future inflation which dwarfed the benefit of the equity markets gains during the month.
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MetLife sells Canadian operations to Unity Life
Continuing on its acquisition trail, Canadian life insurer Unity Life of Canada has clinched a deal with US insurer MetLife that will see it acquire substantially all of the insurance business of MetLife Canada for an undisclosed sum. Under the agreement, Unity Life will acquire MetLife Canadas block of some 100,000 life and health insurance policies and a small number of group annuity contracts, including policy liabilities of about C$300 million ($277 million) and related assets. This transaction is Unity Lifes largest acquisition to date, and reaffirms our growth strategy of acquiring complementary blocks of business that align with Unity Lifes market and area of expertise, supporting the growth of our Canadian business and reducing our unit costs, said the insurers president and CEO, Tony Poole.
UK’s private health market inches ahead
People covered by PMI schemes offered by private health insurers increased by 3.7 percent compared with 2007 to 6.22 million, while the number of people covered by health care trusts decreased by 2.2 percent to 1.11 million Overall this left the total number of people with some form of private health cover at 7.33 million, up 2.7 percent compared with 2007, and equal to some 12 percent of the total population.Health care trusts are arrangements where individual companies provide a form of PMI which is then administrated by insurers and offer cover for employees and their dependents
The Hartford scales back aggressively
Beleaguered US composite insurer The Hartford Financial Services Group will on 1 June suspend writing all new business in Japan, its largest foreign market Termination of sales removes a major competitor in Japans variable annuity (VA) market in which The Hartford has played a key pioneering role and been the leading player for almost a decade.The Hartford reported that on 31 March 2009 its Japanese unit Hartford Life Insurance KK had more than 500,000 policies in force and $30.9 billion of assets under management
Singapore insurers take a hammering
Singapores life insurance industry took a hammering in the first quarter of 2009, reports the Life Insurance Association of Singapore (LIAS) Sales totalled S$818 million ($553 million), a plunge of 73 percent compared with the same period in 2008 The fall came on the back of an 11.3 percent decline in first-quarter GDP and revision of the governments GDP forecast for 2009 as a whole from -6 percent to -9 percent
A ray of hope in UK
This is the conclusion drawn by the leading insurer in the UK market, Legal & General (L&G) from its second quarterly survey of IFA confidence levels.In its protection market surveys L&G assesses: Current future sales; Current future opportunities to discuss protection with potential clients; and Current future ease (or difficulty) of converting those opportunities to sales