Non Life Insurance Sector Buoyant Share in the Insurance Industry Albania: Ken Research

· The insurance industry growth is immensely hinged on motor third-party liability insurance in Albania

· The Albania insurance industry will support private agriculture insurance

Ken Research announced its latest publication on, “The Insurance Industry in Albania, Key Trends and Opportunities to 2019”, which provides a detailed analysis of the insurance industry in Albania. Category-wise coverage of different segments in the industry is also included in the report. It analyzes the various distribution channels in Albania. The report enables the reader to interpret future outlook on how the market will shape up by the end of this decade.

The communist era in Albania hindered the growth of the insurance sector for more than 50 years. This led the sector behind and underdeveloped compared with other European countries with gross written premium of near 0.66 percent of GDP. With insurance consumption of Euro 20 per capita, the sector remains small. There were 11 companies in the insurance market by the end of 2012. The real growth of insurance premium was 3.0% from 2009 to 2012, tumbling below the cumulative GDP growth over the same period despite a low market penetration rate. The share of life insurance was very low accounting for one tenth share of the total insurance industry in the country. The largest share of the total non-life premium was of motor third-party liability insurance. The industry showed a CAGR of 7.6% during 2010-2014.

The insurance sector has relatively low importance in the country’s financial system. In 2014, the banking system made approximately 91.7% of the financial system while the insurance industry made only 1.8% of GDP. To assist the Albanian Financial Supervisory Authority (AFSA) in implementing legal and regulatory reforms to enhance the insurance industry’s supervision and regulation, the World Bank initiated the Albania Insurance Market Reform in 2014. The private agriculture insurance is expected to be carried by an increase in the number of agriculture and related businesses. The country’s population decreased from 3.06 million in 2001 to 2.88 million in 2016 due to increased emigration and falling fertility rate which further decreases insurance incentive, according to Ken Research Analyst.

Global Insurance Industry
The global insurance industry is forecasted to show growth of 6.3 percent in the coming years. Health insurance sector has shown tremendous growth over past years and continue to remain the major insurance sector at the global market. The macroeconomic environment around the world shows significant improvement in the insurance market i.e. increasing GDP in many countries, expansion of financial resources of middle class and high net worth population.

These boost the need for property casualty and life annuity insurance companies. The key challenges for the insurance are increasing competition, tight margin profits and soft pricing conditions. Technological solutions are used by the insurers to improve sales, distribution and customer service ,according to Ken Research Analyst.