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Caribbean Insurance Report 2012
Business Monitor International, Nov 2011, Pages: 86
Business Monitor International's Caribbean Insurance Report provides industry professionals and strategists, corporate analysts, insurance associations, government departments and regulatory bodies with independent forecasts and competitive intelligence on Caribbean's insurance industry.
As a regional market for insurance, the Caribbean remains something of a backwater, notwithstanding that the combined population of the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago is about 16mn, and all countries are able to exploit their geographic proximity to the US. In many instances, nonlife and life insurance remains underdeveloped in terms of the metrics that BMI favours (non-life penetration and life density respectively). The exceptions (eg: the non-life segment of Jamaica and the life segment of Trinidad and Tobago) are few.
As is the case in other parts of the world, premium growth appears to have been resilient over the last few years. However, insurers face the challenges of international macroeconomic headwinds, the demands of solvency and the increasing dominance of the regional groups.
The Caribbean Life insurance segment remains underdeveloped, with Trinidad and Tobago the traditional outperformer in the sector. Similarly the non-life insurance segment is also underdeveloped, with Jamaica the regional outperformer in this segment.
The year 2011 has been a tough one for the segment with two major life insurers, CLICO International Life (CIL) and British American Insurance Company (BAICO) – both subsidiaries of the ill-fated CL Financial – becoming insolvent, posing a downside stability risk to the industry but with the upside potential of consolidation in the fragmented sector.
Catastrophe Risk
All the countries profiled in this report are prone to hurricanes, but in spite of an unprecedented amount of natural disasters and insurance liabilities in 2011, the Caribbean had a comparatively steady year in comparison to Asian counterparts such as New Zealand and Japan. Hurricane Irene incurred the largest losses for the Caribbean in 2011 (of up to US$1.1bn) but nevertheless this was not significant enough to activate the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF). As 2010 was a year with no notable hurricanes affecting the region, this is reflected in published corporate results.
In addition to the threat of liabilities from catastrophe risk and the growing awareness of the benefits of insurance products, the area has seen product innovation in the form of micro-insurance products.
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