Insurance companies
Insurance companies are financial intermediaries that offer direct insurance or reinsurance services, providing financial protection against possible future risks.
Under an insurance policy, the insurance company undertakes to compensate the policyholder for losses caused by a predefined event in return for a fee, or “premium”.
Typically, insurance companies can cover certain types of events.
In the case of life insurance policies, the event is usually the death or deterioration of the health of the insured person. Life insurance policies are often held to save money over a longer period and sometimes for retirement.
Non-life insurance policies protect against the risk of financial loss. They cover expenses the insured
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incurs due to damage to health or property (policies typically offered are medical expenses or home, car and fire insurance) and financial losses such as loss of income.
A special case of non-life insurance is reinsurance. Under a reinsurance contract, an insurance company agrees to assume the risk of a policy held by another insurance company for a premium. If a payment obligation arises, the reinsurance company must pay.
Why are they important?
Insurance policies are an important cornerstone of income and wealth for many households in Europe. Insurance companies also play an important role in financial markets as institutional investors and investment targets. For these reasons, the ECB collects statistical data on insurance corporations' balance sheets and other financial information for its analyzes of the financial system and household wealth.
Insurance company statistics
Our insurance corporation statistics combine data on insurance corporations from euro area countries into one harmonized set of statistics.
Our statistics present separate information according to the operating license of insurance companies. This breakdown results in four reporting sectors: reinsurance, life, non-life and mixed insurance. Reinsurance companies can only engage in reinsurance business (life and non-life). Endowment insurance companies hold both life and non-life business licenses.
Data on insurance companies is divided into three sections:
balance sheet
The balance sheet section presents asset and liability data for life, non-life and composite reinsurance companies, as well as more detailed data for the entire population of insurance companies ("total insurance companies").
The assets section provides information on the holdings of insurance companies: it shows investments of premiums paid and other liabilities, as well as loans made. It also shows claims that insurance companies might have against other parties – for example claims against reinsurance companies arising from reinsurance contracts.
The liabilities section provides information on claims on euro area insurance corporations. These liabilities mainly consist of funds (“insurance technical reserves”) that insurance companies have set up to meet their future payment obligations to policyholders. Liabilities also include insurance company equity, loans received and other financial obligations.
premiums, claims and acquisition costs
The premiums, claims and acquisition costs section presents financial data closely related to insurance policies. Premiums refer to the payments that policyholders regularly transfer to the insurance company in order to be covered in the event of a claim. Incurred claims, or simply claims, are the financial obligations arising from both insurance and reinsurance. Acquisition costs are the costs incurred by an insurance company when issuing new contracts.
large insurance groups
The Large Insurance Groups section contains data collected from approximately 90 insurance groups operating in the European Economic Area (EEA) under the Solvency II regime. This data consists of growth indicators and ratios that the European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB) compiles for financial stability monitoring purposes.
Harmonized statistics on insurance corporations (IC) for the euro area have been available since the third quarter of 2016. They replace the non-harmonised statistics on insurance corporations which were previously published by the ECB in the