Slovakia Insurance Report Q1 2013

Includes 3 FREE quarterly updates

Key Insights And Key Risks

The Slovakia Insurance Report considers the prospects for both life and non-life insurers in that country.

By the standards of its peers in Central and Eastern Europe, Slovakia’s insurance sector is a relatively small market opportunity that is not growing quickly. Given the strong growth in life insurance in Poland in H112, this is a fairly unexciting outcome.

Nevertheless, the results that were published by Vienna Insurance Group (VIG) and Allianz who, between them, account for about 60% of all premiums written in Slovakia, continue to highlight the clear strengths of the sector. In sharp contrast to most of Central and Eastern Europe, there has not been brutal competition in the markets for motor-related insurance (ie compulsory motorists’ third party liability – CMTPL – and voluntary CASCO cover). The fact that life insurance premiums have been able to hold their own, at a time of very low interest rates and well publicised volatility in the eurozone’s financial markets, suggests that the country’s life insurers are providing attractive products to customers who remain convinced of the utility of life insurance. In non-life insurance operations, combined ratios remain fairly low.

What sets Slovakia apart from the other countries in the region is that both the non-life and the life segments are a lot less fragmented. In the non-life segment, Generali’s subsidiary has a double digit market share: in the life segment, the same is true of MetLife ALICO. Collectively, the multi-national insurers who account for almost all of the activity in the insurance sector deliver economies of scale (from their regional or global operations), innovative products, an understanding of distribution and, perhaps most importantly, pricing discipline. The structure and performance of Slovakia’s insurance sector at the beginning of 2013 is a reminder that a wave of consolidation may yet take place in many of the other markets in Central and Eastern Europe.

Over the last quarter, BMI has made the following changes:

• There is a discussion of the results for H112 that were released by the major insurance companies during Q312.
• The analysis takes into account BMI’s latest assessment of an economic environment that remains moderately challenging.