Mutual Insurers Emerge from Economic Crisis with Increase in Market Share

The latest research from ICMIF’s Shared Intelligence department shows how the mutual and cooperative sectors in the UK, USA, Canada and Europe have all consistently and significantly outperformed the rest of the insurance market since the global financial crisis of 2007/08.

The Market InSights reports from ICMIF are a series of market-specific reports compiled using the latest data from ICMIF’s global Mutual Market Share research. The reports include a detailed analysis of the 5-year growth trends of mutual and cooperative insurance companies using financial data from 2007 to 2011.

The first four reports in the series focus on three of the largest global insurance markets; the UK, USA and Canada, as well as a regional market report on Europe. The mutual/cooperative sector in all three individual markets and collectively within the European market demonstrated significant growth in market share since 2007.

Premium volumes of UK mutuals have increased by 38% since 2007, as premiums for the total market were 28% lower in 2011. This has resulted in the market share of mutuals almost doubling from 4.3% to 8.2% in 2011. European mutuals experienced a 15% growth in premiums between 2007 and 2011, as the total regional market shrank by 8%. Consequently, European mutual market share increased by a quarter, up from 22.6% in 2007 to 28.1% in 2011.

The reports include year-on-year analysis of the premium growth of mutual insurers since 2007, with comparison to the rest of the insurance sector. The reports also include data on growth by business line, asset growth with a definitive list of the largest mutual and cooperative insurers by 2011 premium income within each market.

In a recent interview with Insurance Day magazine, Shaun Tarbuck, chief executive of ICMIF, discusses his belief that the mutual insurance sector’s business model and its emphasis on the importance of social values and community have struck a chord with customers coming to terms with the financial difficulties and other changes in their personal circumstances that have been commonplace for people all over the world since the financial crisis began.

The idea of creating the new separate research reports on individual country or regional markets is a new departure for ICMIF. Shaun Tarbuck explained to Insurance Day that the development of these new reports was partly in recognition of the target audience for the ICMIF research being primarily chief executives and senior leaders in the industry who do not have the time to read a long, dense report. It was also in recognition of the fact the data is as important to the mutual insurance sector for publicity and marketing purposes as it is useful as an example of objective market research.

Shaun said “…We have collected all this wonderful data, and now we have broken it down in sufficient detail so ICMIF members can use it in their national or regional markets to publicise and explain the phenomenal growth of the mutual insurance sector. It is helping us to delve deeper into the information we have been collecting for the past 12 years for the Mutual Market Share reports; although it has to be said the data has got much better and much more comparable over the past five years.”