The insurance market is a very important part of the overall financial system. It includes the private and state owned insurance companies that provide insurance for individuals and businesses. In order to benefit from such service, individuals and businesses pay premiums to protect themselves from specific events, and in case this events do happen they receive a specific amount stipulated in the insurance policy.
Life insurance is offered to individuals and in case of their death, the beneficiary listed in the policy receives the insurance amount.
Non-Life insurance includes all insurance services that are not part of life insurance (such as real estate insurance, health insurance, car insurance, etc)
As of 31/12/2010 the life and non-life insurance market in Albania is comprised of 10 different insurance companies:
Source: FSA
*Data as of 31/12/2010
**Capital Origin indicates which country has the majority of capital
Comments and Analysis : Open Data Albania
Out of all insurance companies INSIG is the only one with state capital, whereas the rest are all private.
During 2010, the Albanian market benefitted from aparent of foreign companies to interest to buy equity. Consequently in november 2010 the FSA approved the equity participation of “Wiener Staditsche Versicherung AG Vienna Insurance Group” with a 75% + 1 stake in “Interalbanian” sh.a.
Presently Vienna Insurance Group controls 87% + 1 of the shares of “Sigma Vienna Insurance Group” sh.a. Meanwhile the Slovenian insurance company “Zavarovalnica Triglav” d.d signed an agreement with the Albanian insurance company “Albsig” sh.a and bought 9,9% of its shares .
There are several ways to measure the market share that each insurance company owns, but the simplest one is to measure the total value of the premiums received by each company during a given year. Until 2011 (April), the total premiums received and market share owned by each company is presented in the pie chart below:
Source: FSA
Comments and Analysis : Open Data Albania
Source: FSA
Comments and Analysis : Open Data Albania
As of 2011, in the non-life insurance market, Sigal is the biggest player (36%), followed by Sigma (13%), dhe INSIG (10%), while the rest is divided almost evenly between the rest of the companies.
Back in 2004, Sigal had 31% of the market, Sigma 27% and INSIG 17%. Therefore during the last 7 years Sigal has gained non-life insurance market share at the expense of ka Sigma and INSIG which have lost respectively 14% dhe 7%.
As far as the life insurance market goes, the biggest player here is SIGAL Life (49%), followed by Sicred (29%) and INSIG (22%). In 2004, INSIG had about 96% of the entire market (which means that in 7 years INSIG has lost about 74% of the market).
The insurance market is very important because it allows the risk transfer from one party to the other. Therefore the individuals and businesses who do not want to carry risk can transfer it to an insurance company. This is a key element for the well-functioning of economic and financial markets in a country.
Contributed by: R.E