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Egypt Insurance Report Q1 2012
Business Monitor International, Jan 2012, Pages: 70
Business Monitor International's Egypt Insurance Report provides industry professionals and strategists, corporate analysts, insurance associations, government departments and regulatory bodies with independent forecasts and competitive intelligence on Egypt's insurance industry.
As of December 2011, it appears that the political unrest that has swept Egypt since early 2011 is unlikely to have a lasting impact on the Egyptian insurance sector. Arab Misr Insurance Group (AMIG), the local affiliate of Kuwait’s Gulf Insurance, reported that gross written premiums rose by 7% in the year to June 2011. The company’s profits also increased. Much of the life segment – as BMI sees it – includes contributions to private insurance funds that are providing basic protection-type products: only in the event of a total economic meltdown, which has not happened in Egypt, would the contributions fall.
Media reports on the budget for Insurance Holding Company, the vehicle through which the government maintains its interest in the recapitalised and restructured Misr Insurance and Misr Life, is looking for growth in premiums, underwriting profits and net earnings in the current (June 2012) year relative to the June 2010 year.
Nevertheless, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Egypt’s insurance sector has entered a phase of stagnation. The regulatory regime has been overhauled and Insurance Holding Company has been strengthened financially. However, there is as yet no sign that non-life penetration – a basic measure of development – is increasing. In fact, the opposite has been the case for some time. Given the state of political flux, there does not appear to be any official enthusiasm for radical change at the state-owned titan which accounts for about half of all premiums (and which holds an interesting real estate portfolio). The passage of new laws and regulations governing bancassurance and the private insurance funds have been stalled by political developments.
Taking a two- to three-year view, BMI suggests that there are two aspects of Egypt’s insurance sector that will be particularly crucial. One will be life density. If density (premiums per capita) continue to rise from what is a fairly negligible level, it will be a sign that those Egyptians who are rich enough to save are confident about the prospects of the country under whatever administration ultimately emerges. Density in Indonesia, for instance, is about three times what it is in Egypt. Under certain scenarios, life insurance in Egypt could surge.
The other aspect is policy in relation to Misr Insurance and Misr Life, the two main operating units of the fully state-owned Misr Insurance Holding Company. By combining and restructuring four previouslyexisting organisations under one umbrella, the government has created a national champion that dominates both the non-life and the life segments. Further, the combined group is unquestionably one of the largest indigenous composite insurance companies in the Middle East and North Africa.
However, BMI notes the progress to date compares unfavourably with the situations in all other countries surveyed by BMI. In many other countries, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, the governments have gone far further than has the government of Egypt to ensure that the state-owned insurer has had access to international capital and know-how: in some cases, companies have been fully sold to private sector (and often foreign) interests.
In some other countries, the state-owned insurers remain substantially entirely under state control and have only partially undergone changes that would make them fully competitive in a commercial sense.
However, all such companies are orders of magnitude larger than the state-owned companies in Egypt and are operating in economies that are vastly bigger and/or more dynamic. Radical reform of Misr Insurance and Misr Life is a positive wildcard – but one that BMI is not expecting.
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