In January 2022, GWPs increased by 9% YoY. GWPs in Non-life insurance increased by 9.1%, while the GWPS in Life insurance increased by 8.5% YoY.

Croatian Insurance Bureau has published its monthly insurance statistics for January 2022. In it, we can see the overview of the insurance development during the first month of the year. Total GWPs increased by 9% YoY, (or HRK 102.1m), which is the continuation of strong growth trend evidenced last year (2021 +11% YoY).

The total amount of GWPs collected amounted to 1.24bn (it should be noted that this number includes both the insurers located in Croatia as well as insurers operating in Croatia but which are based in other EU countries). This growth was achieved because of the increases in both the Non-life insurance as well as the life insurance sectors.

Total Croatian GWPs and Croatia osiguranje GWPs in 2021 (HRK bn)

The Life insurance sector increased by 8.5% YoY. The largest Croatian insurance company, Croatia osiguranje, has a market share of 18.1%, which is an increase of 5.2 p.p. compared to the same period last year. This would amount to an increase of HRK 19.5m YoY. Meanwhile, other insurance companies had mixed results in this period. Allianz the 2nd largest insurance company by market share in January last year lost 11.84 p.p. of market share in GWPs YoY (from 23.92% to 12.08%). In January 2022 it sold half of last year’s GWPs, and realized a decrease of HRK 21.2m in Life insurance GWPs YoY. At the same time, Generali Osiguranje increased its market share by 4.55 p.p. (from 5.69% to 10.24%) or an increase of HRK 10.6m, while WIG increased its market share by 3.71 p.p. or HRK 11.64m in total Life insurance GWPs.

Meanwhile, the largest segment of the collected GWPs in Croatia, the Non-life insurance (which accounts for 82.7% of total GWPs) increased by 9.1% YoY (or HRK 85.3m), amounting to HRK 1.02bn in January 2022. Looking over to the insurance companies, Croatia osiguranje has the largest market share in this segment, at 27.68%. This is a decrease of -0.44 p.p. compared to January 2021 in market share, but still an overall increase of 7.46% (or HRK 13.4m). This does indicate that while the company is growing and expanding its business, it is growing slightly slower than the entire market, which results in slight decrease of market share. At the same time, no other company had a significant change in market share compared to January 2021, but looking at the change they experienced in absolute amounts, we can see that even though no significant market share change happened, these companies still grew and expanded. Ranking them by this absolute change YoY, we have Allianz, which grew by HRK 18.8m (or 14.4% compared to the amount in January 2021), followed by WIG with an increase of HRK 11.6m (or +13.23%), Generali Osiguranje with HRK 11.1m (or + 16.6%), and Uniqa osiguranje, with an increase of HRK 10.5m, (or +27.4%) YoY.

Looking at the biggest increases by segments of the Non-life insurance, in absolute amounts, Loan insurance increased the most, growing by HRK 18.5m (or +109.7%), followed by Insurance against civil liability in respect to the use of motor vehicles, which grew by HRK 16.9m (or +7.9%). Next up, we have Health insurance and Vehicle insurance (casco policy), which grew by HRK 15.2m (or 19.3%) and HRK 12.5m (or 11.1%), respectively. These trends can be explained by both the growing number of car registrations, and relaxed travel measures allowing for more traffic (for the vehicle-related insurances), as well as the COVID-19 spike experienced during the last two months, leading to an increase in Health insurance spending. Meanwhile, the largest decrease in absolute amount was recorded in the Other property insurance segment, which decreased by HRK -4.6m (or -3.48%).

Turning our attention to the Life insurance segment, the largest increase was recorded in the Life or rent insurance in which the insurance contractor takes on the investment risk, which increased by HRK 17.3m (or +114.6%). At the same time, the largest decrease was recorded in the Life assurance, which decreased by HRK 1.56m (or -0.92%) YoY.

When looking at gross insurance claims paid they increased in Non-Life segment by 13.6% YoY , which is 1.18 p.p. below growth of gross insurance claims in 2021 so we can say that slowdown in claims growth has occurred.

Looking over to Croatia osiguranje, it currently holds 24.14% of all the GWPs collected, which is a decrease of 1.02 p.p. YoY. In total, this amounts to HRK 2.88bn, which is an increase of HRK 193.5m YoY.

Croatia osiguranje Market Share (November 2010 – January 2022, %)