Insurance firms post 18% premium growth in 9 months

MANILA, Philippines — The local insurance industry reported an 18-percent growth in premium income in the first nine months as all life, non-life and microinsurance sectors exhibited strong performance during the period, according to the Insurance Commission.

According to the latest data from the IC, the insurance industry recorded a total premium income of P218.91 billion as of end-September, 18 percent higher than the P185.51 billion recorded in the same period last year.

Insurance commissioner Dennis Funa said all sectors – life insurance, non-life insurance and mutual benefit associations (MBAs) – registered positive growth in terms of premiums collected.

The life insurance sector, for its part, reported P174.15 billion in premiums, which accounted for 79.55 percent of the total premiums collected by the industry.

This was also 20.4 percent higher than the P144.63 billion posted in the same period in 2017.

Broken down, the life insurance sector collected P130.14 billion in premiums from variable life insurance products and P44.02 billion from traditional life insurance products.

According to Funa, there has been a significant increase in all premium types of variable life insurance products.

“First year, single and renewal premiums of variable life insurance products posted double digit increase of 20.72 percent, 21.27 percent and 29.52 percent, respectively,” he said.

Meanwhile, the net premiums written by the non-life insurance sector also increased by 7.34 percent to P36.83 billion from the P34.31 billion registered a year ago.

Motor car insurance business continued to be the driver for the non-life insurance sector’s growth, contributing more than half or 51.39 percent of the total net premiums.

This was followed by the fire insurance business which accounted for 13 percent, and the accident insurance business which contributed 9.87 percent.

Lastly, the contributions and premiums collected by MBAs rose by 21.2 percent to P7.93 billion from P6.54 billion in the same period last year.

Funa said the insurance industry‘s total assets as of end-September also rose to P1.55 trillion from P1.54 trillion last year.

Funa noted that other indicators, such as insurance density and penetration, also pointed toward positive growth.

“The insurance density which was P1,768.49 as of end-September last year increased by 16.12 percent to P2,053.58 per capita,” the IC chief said.

“Insurance penetration likewise increase by 0.12 percentage point to 1.76 percent as of end of third quarter this year from 1.64 percent during the same period last year,” he said.

Insurance density is defined as the ratio of premium to the total population. Insurance penetration, on the other hand, is measured as the ratio of premiums to the country’s gross domestic product.