Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/58dda740/south_africa_insur) has announced the addition of the "South Africa Insurance Report Q1 2012" report to their offering.
South Africa Insurance Report provides industry professionals and strategists, corporate analysts, insurance associations, government departments and regulatory bodies with independent forecasts and competitive intelligence on South Africa's insurance industry.
The latest results published by South Africa's leading insurance companies in late 2011, in relation to the first nine months of the year, generally confirmed the trends that we highlighted in our Q411 report. Despite their absolute size and the central role played by life insurance products in South Africa's organised savings system, the major companies generally reported strong growth in demand for long-term savings products. Encouragingly, persistency rates are continuing to hold up.
Profitability remains robust, partly because of lower lapse rates and partly because of initiatives undertaken by company managements. The major players continue to pursue opportunities in other markets of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). They have the overall strength and the appreciation of the risks involved to take a long view. For the time being, though, the other markets for life insurance in the region are very much smaller than South Africa.
It is not impossible that 2011 comes to be seen as the year in which the strengths of South Africa's life insurers in a global context came to the fore. Because of the peculiar history of South Africa, they have enormous tolerance of emerging markets risk and particularly political risk. Compared to their counterparts in broadly comparable countries such as Taiwan (especially) or Israel, they have generally had to work with much smaller pools of organised savings.
To a greater extent than their Taiwanese or Israeli peers, they have developed very substantial businesses in developed countries. Nevertheless, in contrast to many, often much larger, groups in Europe, they appear to have suffered little from the volatility in global financial markets in 2011.
Companies Mentioned
- Chartis
- Global Alliance
- Guardrisk
- HDI-Gerling
- Hollard
- Liberty Life
- MMI Holdings
- Munich Re
- Mutual & Federal
- Nedgroup Life
- Old Mutual
- OUTsurance
- Sanlam
- Santam
- Zurich SA
For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/58dda740/south_africa_insur