Swiss insurance companies significantly increase profit in 2023
Published: Wednesday, Sep 4th 2024, 11:00
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Swiss insurers can look back on a successful 2023. The aggregated annual profits of the insurance companies supervised by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) climbed by 78% to CHF 13.6 billion, according to a report published by the supervisory authority on Wednesday.
One reason for the clear improvement in results was the good performance on the equity and bond markets. On average, insurers were able to improve the returns achieved on their investments to 2.95 percent from 1.40 percent in 2022, according to the report.
After two years of lower profits, reinsurers in particular clearly improved their annual result to CHF 5.4 billion (2022: CHF 0.5 billion). This was driven by the increase in profit at industry leader Swiss Re. Non-life insurance (+18% to CHF 6.9 billion) also increased significantly, while the increase in life insurance (+4% to CHF 1.3 billion) was limited.
Premium income also increased for non-life insurers (+19%) and reinsurers (+4%), while that of life insurers (-1.2%) declined. In non-life insurance and reinsurance, tariffs were increased further in view of inflation. Across the industry as a whole, the aggregate gross premium volume increased by 9.1% to CHF 140.6 billion.
Meanwhile, the equity of all companies fell slightly by 0.7% to CHF 82.9 billion, while the solvency ratios according to the Swiss Solvency Test (SST) fell on average by 16 percentage points from the previous very high level to 254%.
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