By FintechNews staff
The Latin American insurance market registered an 11.9% decrease in premiums during the year of the pandemic, to 134.361 billion dollars, of which 57% came from non-life insurance and the remaining 43% from life insurance. These figures are shown in the report titled The Latin American insurance market in 2020, prepared by MAPFRE Economics and published by Fundación MAPFRE.
The sector’s contraction was caused mainly by the evolution of the life insurance business, with a sharp decline in this line of business in Brazil, Mexico, Chile and Colombia, as well as by the effect of the depreciation of their currencies. As a consequence, the total global share of the Latin American insurance market fell again in the past year, reaching 2.1%.
Premiums in the life insurance segment fell sharply by -18.7% in dollar terms (compared to +5.1% in 2019), while premiums in the non-life segment dropped by -6.1% (compared to -1.1% in 2019).
These declines affected most of the major markets in Latin America, the Chilean market being the one that fell the most (-15.3%), followed by Ecuador (-5.3%), Mexico (-3.1%), Peru (-2.4%) and Brazil (-2%). However, there were some exceptions, with Puerto Rico (13.7%) standing out for its growth due to the strong performance of health insurance.
The consolidated net result of the region’s insurance market amounted to 9.316 billion dollars in 2020, representing growth of 30.1% over the previous year.
