Mutual/cooperative insurers grow market share in LatAm

Mutual and cooperative insurers have been the fastest-growing part of the Latin American insurance market and collectively held a record market share in 2015, according to a Market InSights report published by the International Cooperative and Mutual Insurance Federation.

The figures show that mutual/cooperative insurers have increased their market share from 9.9 percent in 2007 to 12 percent in 2015.

Mutual insurers in Latin America collectively wrote $18.6 billion in insurance premiums in 2015, as a steep depreciation of virtually all local currencies against the US dollar resulted in a 5.1 percent decline in regional premium levels from the previous year (2014: $19.6 billion).

According to ICMIF, 2015 was the first year of premium decrease since 2007, however the decline in mutual business was not as severe as that of the total industry (-11.6 percent), resulting in a rise in mutuals’ share of the total regional market, up from 11.2 percent in 2014.

Faye Lageu, senior vice president, business intelligence at ICMIF, said: “The Latin American insurance market may be relatively young, but it is growing fast, and the cooperative/mutual insurance sector in many national markets is a significant contributor to that regional growth.

“Latin America is home to some of the world’s fastest growing cooperative/mutual insurers, though predominantly cooperative as there is a striking predominance of the cooperative business model across the region. There are strong indications based on consistent performance and trend data for the previous seven years that we can expect this market share to continue growing.”