Aon Benfield identifies 7 key opportunities for insurers
Aon Benfield, the reinsurance intermediary of Aon, has identified seven key business opportunities for insurers over the next five to ten years.
In its annual report on the state of the global insurance market, Aon Benfield identified the opportunities as: US mortgage credit, the sharing economy, reputation and brand, microinsurance, corporate liability covers, terrorism cover, and cyber risk.
On microinsurance, the report said that there is the potential for four billion new customers.
It added: “According to the latest numbers, 263 million people worldwide are now covered by some form of microinsurance. This is up from 78 million people in 2005—roughly 19 percent annual growth.”
The report also highlights that three key strands of the market – demand driven by new emerging risks, supply from new capital, and empowering data and analytics – have all seen favourable developments, contributing to a positive outlook for the insurance industry.
Additionally, the report said that global insurance premium totalled $5 trillion during 2014, with global insurance capital standing at $4.2 trillion at year-end, an increase of six percent year-on-year.
Aon Benfield revealed that 13 countries achieved annual growth of more than 10 percent over the last five years. Over this period, Nigeria was shown to have the lowest combined ratio at 84.8 percent, while Romania had the highest combined ratio at 120.3 percent.
“In 2014, 27 of the 50 countries analysed in the study achieved combined ratios below 95 percent, with Indonesia leading the rankings with a combined ratio of 83.6 percent, followed by Brazil and Malaysia,” said the report.
Stephen Mildenhall, global chief executive officer of analytics for Aon, said: “A core theme of the study is how data and analytics can, and must, provide the glue between supply and demand to ensure a growing, thriving insurance market over the coming decade.
“We believe that while data, technology, and analytics are driving many of the emerging risk perils, they simultaneously hold the promise of delivering parallel solutions through the new capabilities they enable.”
