For many industries, the current revenue growth was at an acceptable level, but for the non-life insurance industry, slow growth was also a big problem.
The insurance industry was generally accustomed to double-digit annual growth, in which the non-life sector was growing slower than the life sector. Still, with the leading group, the fee revenue growth of over 10 percent per year was not a pressing issue.
Perhaps so, with newly published data, the non-life field had many worries.
According to preliminary statistics of insurance enterprises, the general growth rate of the whole non-life insurance market in Vietnam in the first six months of 2020 was estimated at 10 percent to 12 percent compared to the same period of 2019.
The market share insurance companies had a low growth rate. Even some businesses had not grown over the same period. Specifically, PVI Insurance Corporation (PVI) grew by less than 10%, Bao Minh Insurance Corporation increased by over 10%, Post Telecommunication Joint Stock Insurance Corporation (PTI) grew by about five percent, BIDV Insurance Corporation (BIC) rose by over 10%.
However, there were also businesses with sudden growth like Petrolimex Joint-Stock Insurance Company (PJICO) with the growth of original insurance revenue in the first six months of nearly 25%. PJICO’s initial insurance revenue in the first six months of 2020, estimated at 1.764 trillion dong, increased by 24.5 percent compared to the same period in 2019 and 2.5 times higher than the market growth rate, reaching 61 percent of the year plan. This was the highest six-month growth rate of PJICO in the past 15 years.
Health insurance of this insurance company had grown very well in the past six months with an expected rate of more than 190 percent because since the end of 2019, PJICO had implemented many synchronous measures to promote health insurance revenue, including expanding cooperation with life insurance products, health care insurance cooperating with many financial institutions.
Returning to other insurance services of the market, the most significant decrease in revenue in the first six months of 2020 was motor vehicle insurance due to the sudden decline in vehicle sales.
In the first months of 2020, although the compulsory insurance of civil liability increased sharply due to the impact of the total road traffic control of the authorities, it still did not help. There was a drop in motor vehicle insurance revenue.
Many insurers had a market share of motor vehicle insurance with a low growth rate, even negative compared to the same period last year.
Insurance enterprises expected the revenue to prosper again in Q3/2020 when new car sales grew back.
Other businesses, such as cargo insurance, ship insurance, were still profoundly affected by Covid-19, so growth was forecast to be unable to recover.
However, there was a bright spot in the first six months of this year, which was health insurance revenue. According to preliminary estimates of insurers, the health insurance market revenue of the whole market maintained a growth rate of 35 percent over the same period.
According to insurers, not only because of Covid-19 but actually in the past two years, the growth rate of personal insurance products had always doubled compared to motor vehicle insurance.
With a population of 97 million people in Vietnam today, the potential for individual insurance was huge. In the future, this would be an area for insurance enterprises to focus resources to invest in researching and launching new products to meet the requirements of the people.
With PTI, the individual insurance business, including health care insurance and postal security insurance, were recording a relatively high growth rate. Health care insurance alone in the first six months of 2020 increased by more than 50%. The reason was that the epidemic situation was complicated, so people changed their awareness, learned and bought health insurance products more than before, said PTI representative.
Reported business results in the first six months, PTI said that total revenue reached 2.907 trillion dong, which grew by 5.5%. Despite high revenue growth, PTI also said that the growth rate was still lower than in 2019.
By the end of Q2/2020, PTI’s services, including motor vehicle insurance, marine insurance and technical property insurance, grew by 5.5%, 9.4 percent and 22.5%, respectively.
Previously, PTI had focused on motor vehicle insurance products. However, after the Covid-19 pandemic, the company assessed that the market trend would be more inclined to focus on developing health insurance products for people, PTI representative acknowledged.
