According to him, the US life insurance, which is used as a long-term investment and an analogue of pension savings, loses its profitability and its attractiveness in comparison with other financial instruments. The US government plans to tighten legislation on life insurance, giving more freedom to insurers' clients. This forms the negative expectations of the market.
Germany, however, is one of the four largest European markets for life insurance and pension savings, along with Britain, France and Italy.
Speaking of France, it is worth mentioning that this country is actively using tax concessions to stimulate the insurance market. Thanks to that, life insurance is popular, and is used to form pension savings. First, pension insurance plans are more profitable for citizens than bank deposits. Secondly, if the citizen decides to take all the pension savings from the insurer, he only has to pay the tax on profits that he managed to get.
And in Britain, the so-called investment, or pension life insurance, is common. While a citizen works, he or his employer pays contributions to a private insurance company. After the client's retirement, the insurance company either returns the accumulated amount of contributions to him, or makes monthly payments equal to a certain percentage of savings, while at the same time using the client's savings for their needs. To receive such payments, one used to buy a special life insurance policy - annuity. In 2015, in the United Kingdom, this rule was changed: the government of the country established the so-called "pension freedom". Earlier, if a citizen, at the age of 55, decided to withdraw his pension savings from the insurer, he could receive only 25% of the amount free of charge. The rest of the withdrawal was taxed by a special tax of 55%. After "pension freedom" introduction this tax was replaced by the usual income tax, which significantly reduced the penalty for withdrawing all pension savings at once. Besides, pensioners got access to several options for regular payments based on their retirement savings, even with no annuity. Due to legislative changes, the number of buyers of life insurance policies fell by 91% in two years, worsening the situation of insurance companies.
In Russia, the only driver of market growth is life insurance: in comparison with 2016, the growth as of 2017 is 60% (the 1st half of 2016 - 88 billion rubles, the 1st half of 2017 - 141 billion rubles). Positive dynamics is not observed in other types, as indicated in the review of Sergei Katargin. The potential of the Russian insurance market is huge, but the main constraining factors are low financial literacy and mistrust of the insurance institution in general.
The review author also noted the long-term trend in all countries of the world. It is an online policy sales and significant inputs of insurance companies in IT infrastructure. First of all, the most standardized products are transferred to the Internet: cars and real estate insurance. Britain can be called a leader in this area, where more than 50% of policies for cars and about 25% of insurances for real estate are bought by individuals online. Mobile services are most rapidly developing in countries of Africa, Asia and South America, where many residents can access the Internet only from the phone.
Nevertheless, in general, the process of the insurance market digitalization is slow, the survey notes. This is due not only to poverty and limited Internet access in developing countries, but also to legislative restrictions and, for example, reluctance of small insurance companies in America to bear the IT infrastructure costs.
Besides, direct online policy sales interfere with the existing broker network creating problems for insurance companies in developed countries. In addition, there is a cultural problem: in case of complex products, in particular, health insurance, for many buyers it is easier to discuss the conditions and features of the policy with the broker than to study the issue on the Internet. Perhaps this problem will be resolved through the introduction of bots-assistants: according to the Accenture survey, 71% of people are ready to use the bot advice when choosing insurance online.
Source: https://vc.ru/31955-globalnyy-rynok-strahovaniya-obzor-tekushchey-situacii
Photo per websites: http://ptel.cz, http://fiveptsins.com
