Date of publication
24 February 2022

24/02/2022 - In common with other sectors, the insurance industry had to face the direct and indirect consequences of COVID-19 on people’s everyday life, health and on the economy in 2020. Insurers experienced a slowdown in the premiums they wrote in 2020 compared to 2019, particularly in the life sector where premium volumes even declined, as customers may have reduced discretionary expenditure such as life insurance policies. While COVID-19 has disrupted the traditional distribution processes of insurance policies in some jurisdictions, it has served as a catalyst in many countries for further digitalisation of the services provided by insurance companies.

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About the report

The insurance industry is a major component of the economy by virtue of the amount of premiums it collects, the scale of its investment and, more fundamentally, the essential social and economic role it plays by covering personal and business risks.

This annual report monitors global insurance market trends to support a better understanding of the overall performance and health of the insurance industry. The report is compiled using data from the OECD Global Insurance Statistics (GIS) database. The geographical reach of the GIS database is constantly expanding and now covers 59 jurisdictions. In addition to the 38 OECD countries, it covers a number of non-OECD Latin American countries – achieved through cooperation with the Association of Latin American Insurance Supervisors (ASSAL) – and selected non-OECD jurisdictions in the Asian region and elsewhere.

This monitoring report and its associated database represent one of the few global publicly available sources of comparable cross-country data on insurance sector developments. They provide a unique and increasingly rich source of data and information that can be used by central banks, the insurance sector and broader financial industry, consumers and the research community for research and analysis into the development of the insurance sector, and by governmental and supervisory authorities around the world for insurance sector policy development.

See also

Key statistics on insurance

Global Insurance Statistics (GIS) database