Insurance firms’ profit, sales up as of end-Sept

With a recovering economy and more awareness about insurance products amid a prolonged pandemic, industry sales and profit climbed during the first nine months of 2021, the Insurance Commission (IC) said on Friday.

The total premiums earned, or insurance policies sold, by life and nonlife insurers as well as mutual benefit associations (MBAs) from January to September rose 28.7 percent to P278.7 billion from P216.5 billion a year ago, the IC said in a statement.

IC data showed that end-September industry-wide premiums also surpassed the P224.9 billion recorded during the first nine months of 2019, prepandemic. Sales dipped last year due to quarantine restrictions which took a hit on in-person transactions, but insurers had been able to quickly adjust to the new normal wrought by COVID-19 as they increasingly tapped digital channels to sell their products and services.

As such, the insurance industry’s aggregate net income climbed 31 percent to P37.5 billion from P28.6 billion in the same nine-month period last year. Their end-September 2021 bottom line was also higher than the P31.7 billion in 2019.

The stronger sales and profit came despite also larger benefits that insurance firms had to disburse in the first nine months of 2021, partly due to COVID-19 claims.

The IC said the life, non-line and MBA sectors paid out P101.2 billion in benefits as of September, a jump of 45.1 percent from P69.8 billion last year. Prepandemic benefit payments reached P78.1 billion in end-September 2019.

“The growth of the life and nonlife insurers’ and MBAs’ aggregate premiums and contributions earned and their aggregate net income in the third quarter of 2021 are indicative of economic recovery amid the COVID-19 pandemic,” Insurance Commissioner Dennis Funa said.

Gross domestic product (GDP) reverted to an average of 4.9-percent growth during the January-to-September period as more economic sectors were reopened from the most stringent COVID-19 lockdowns since the onset of the pandemic last year, which, in turn, had slid the Philippines to its worst post-war recession in 2020.

The bigger benefit payments, meanwhile, “highlighted the commitment and responsiveness of our insurers and MBAs to the needs of the insuring public despite the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic,” Funa said. INQ