|
|
 |
|
Viewing report
|
|
|
|
Australia Insurance Report 2011
Business Monitor International, Nov 2010, Pages: 53
Australia Insurance Report provides industry professionals and strategists, corporate analysts, insurance associations, government departments and regulatory bodies with independent forecasts and competitive intelligence on Australia's insurance industry.
Writing in November 2010, BMI have been able to include final data for the year ending June 30 2010 Total insurance premiums in Australia in FY10 amounted toAUD72.4bn. This includes non-life premiums of AUD32.5bn and life premiums of AUD39.9bn.
BMI forecast for the life and non-life segments to grow over the forecast period at a rate of 7% per annum, which is somewhat faster than the growth rate for the economy as a whole. BMI’s proprietary Insurance Business Environment Rating for Australia is 76.8.
The Australian economy generally escaped the more serious consequences of the global financial crisis. Most importantly its financial institutions were not directly involved in the subprime debacle. Each of the large banking and insurance groups remains profitable and financially sound (with the reservation that BMI are concerned about the exposure of Australia’s banks to a potential housing price bubble). The non-life sector has emerged essentially unscathed. A hardening market and a reasonably conservative investment approach saw the non-life companies report profit through the crisis, even though results were affected by lower or negative investment income. Several successive years of higher than average claims from natural disasters has prompted a reappraisal as to what the ‘average’ level is likely to be in coming years.
The life sector has fared worse, with premiums down significantly in the face of substantial investment losses. Many of the write-downs are unrealised and will be recovered, progressively, if the slow improvement in equity markets is sustained.
Growth in the life sector is dominated by contributions to Australia’s superannuation regime. This part of the industry is still growing at over 10% a year and is likely to do so throughout the forecast period. The links between superannuation and life insurance mean that the biggest players are the local financial services groups, which combine strong local brands with distribution power and, usually, a bancassurance offering. The core of this group is known as the ‘five pillars’ – the four large banks plus AMP. While they were relatively small transactions in terms of market share, the acquisition of the Australian operations of Aviva by National Australia Bank/MLC and the acquisition of the remaining 50% of ING’s Australian business by ANZ were symbolic of the trend.
Key Features of This Report
This report is not substantially different from its predecessor in terms of structure. They have updated the comments and statistics to take into account developments through 2009 and 2010. The more important change has been the tailoring of Company Profiles to reflect their Australian operations more than their global position.
Product samples
A sample for this product is available. Please Login/Register to download this sample.
|
|
|
|
