The value of in-force risk premium at the end of June 2015 was 2.233 billion, up from 2.115 billion (including WOL and group insurance, excluding them it’s about 1.986 billion, but the gain was similar) for a total gain of over 5%. That is pretty good when inflation was under 1%, and economic growth is about 3%. The industry is therefore growing at a substantially faster rate than the economy as a whole.
Insurers fret that the growth is confined mainly to increases on the premiums for cover already in-force, rather than increases in cover amounts, or increases in the number of people covered. That is a legitimate concern. Merely increasing premiums for the group of people that have insurance is not helping to get more of the people that do not own any insurance better protected – that is another important issue.
2015 was a very busy year: 24 products were re-priced in the year and 45 products had wording changes from minor technical things to meet new legislative requirements to major product upgrades. We do not expect that 2016 will be slower.