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Croatia Insurance Report Q1 2012
Business Monitor International, Jan 2012, Pages: 77
Business Monitor International's Croatia Insurance Report provides industry professionals and strategists, corporate analysts, insurance associations, government departments and regulatory bodies with independent forecasts and competitive intelligence on Croatia's insurance industry.
Like most of its peers in Central and Eastern Europe, Croatia could be described as an insurance market that is small and stagnant. In fact, the figures published by HANFA, the omnibus financial services regulator, indicate that both non-life and life premiums in the first eight months of 2011 were about 2% lower than they had been in the previous corresponding period. Neither non-life penetration nor life density – the key growth drivers that BMI takes into account in building its forecasts, are rising rapidly.
The life segment, in particular, is underdeveloped: the small size of unit-linked products suggests that Croatian households who use life insurance have become more cautious.
Nevertheless, a number of strengths are obvious. For a small country that is not yet in the European Union, a surprising number of multi-national companies are present in Croatia. Some of these are relatively small Austrian groups such as Grawe and Merkur. However, Allianz, Vienna Insurance Group (through no fewer than three different subsidiaries), Generali, ERGO and Uniqa are present – as are less frequently encountered names such as Baloise and Triglav.
Put another way, Croatian households and businesses are being offered risk management and savings solutions by a large variety of companies that can take advantage of economies of scale across European – or global – businesses.
One company that does not have access to such economies of scale is CROATIA Osiguranje, the state owned enterprise in which the government now holds only 51%. The transfer by the government, in October 2011, of a 29% stake in CROATIA to the managers of the national Pensioners' Fund (as an in specie part repayment of a debt) reduces its control over the company that still speaks for about 40% of non-life premiums and one third of total premiums. Another substantial shift in the shareholding of CROATIA could prove to be the catalyst for a major – and, in BMI's view, beneficial – consolidation of what is a fairly fragmented insurance sector (particularly in the life segment).
A recent survey shows that most of the insurance companies associate Croatia's looming EU accession with even greater competition: they are looking for a wave of mergers to take place.
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