In Summary
The insurance industry is cooling from exceptional growth, not slowing into weakness. Global premiums rose by +7.1% to EUR6.9trn in 2025, adding EUR456bn to the global premium pool. Although growth moderated from the exceptional +9.4% recorded in 2024, it remained comfortably above the ten-year CAGR of +5.6%, confirming that the industry’s growth drivers remain firmly intact. Life insurance remained the largest segment (EUR2,861bn; +EUR185bn in 2025), followed by P&C (EUR2,320bn; +EUR85bn) and health (EUR1,688bn; +EUR185bn).
Asia remains the structural center of growth even as advanced markets outperform cyclically. Western Europe grew nearly twice as fast as its 2015–2025 average, while emerging market growth softened as China slowed to +7.4%, more than 3pps below its long-term average. Excluding China and Japan, however, Asia remained the industry’s fastest-growing major region, with premium growth accelerating to +10.9% versus a long-term average of +4.9%.
Much of the industry’s recent expansion reflects higher prices rather than materially broader coverage. Global insurance penetration rose only modestly to 7.2% of GDP in 2025 and remains below levels seen a decade ago. The disconnect is most visible in P&C, where penetration has stagnated around 2.5% of GDP despite strong premium growth. Trends across business lines are diverging: health-insurance penetration rose from 1.4% of GDP in 2015 to 1.8% in 2025, while life insurance at 3.0% remains well below the levels above 4% seen two decades ago.
The P&C boom is normalizing while life and health remain structurally strong. Global P&C growth slowed to +3.8% in 2025 as pricing cycles matured and claims inflation stabilized. North America remained dominant, accounting for 52% of global P&C premiums, while Asia continued to exhibit the world’s largest protection gap, with penetration of just 1.3% compared with 4.3% in North America. Life insurance grew by a still robust +6.9%, though the US annuity boom is fading. Health insurance remained the industry’s strongest growth story, expanding by +12.3%, the fastest pace since 2014, driven by rising medical costs and growing demand for private healthcare protection.
Despite Asia’s rise, global insurance remains overwhelmingly dominated by the US. North America increased its share of global premiums from 42.5% to 46.4% over the past decade, meaning that almost every second euro written globally now originates from the region. China has emerged as a clear number two, increasing its market share from 7.5% to 10.9%. Yet, at EUR746bn in premiums, it remains less than a quarter of the size of the North America market at EUR3,191bn. Western Europe, by contrast, will continue to lose relative weight across most business lines.
Geopolitics and fragmentation are becoming central forces shaping the insurance industry. The Iran war is acting as a major external supply shock, disrupting energy markets, trade flows and supply chains. In our central scenario, global GDP growth is expected to slow to +2.6% in 2026, while Eurozone growth will fall to just +0.8%. If the conflict is not resolved during the summer, we expect additional upward pressure on inflation and a materially worse global growth outlook. More broadly, geopolitical fragmentation is creating a structurally more complex operating environment, challenging assumptions around global integration, capital mobility and cross-border risk diversification. Insurers will need to adapt by building more regionally resilient operating models, integrating geopolitical analysis more directly into underwriting and capital allocation and developing products tailored to emerging risks such as cyber escalation. While fragmentation raises costs and operational complexity, it also increases demand for protection and resilience, reinforcing the strategic relevance of insurance in a more uncertain global environment.
Protection remains a structurally growing need in an increasingly uncertain and ageing world. The global insurance market is expected to expand by +5.3% annually over the next decade, driven by rising demand for protection, demographic change, higher interest rates and growing health and retirement needs. Health insurance is projected to remain the fastest-growing segment at +6.7% p.a., followed by life insurance at +4.9% and P&C at +4.7%. Asia, particularly China and India, will remain the main growth engine, adding 5pps to their global market share, while North America is expected to retain its dominant global market position at roughly 46%. Europe, by contrast, is likely to continue ceding global market share over the coming decade (-4pps).
Asia will generate most of the industry’s future growth, with India emerging as the standout opportunity. The global premium pool is expected to expand by EUR5,260bn by 2036, with more than half of additional premiums originating in Asia. China will remain the region’s dominant market, but India is expected to emerge as the fastest-growing major insurance market. Despite already ranking among the world’s ten largest, India remains significantly underinsured, with penetration of just 3.8% of GDP and per capita spending of roughly EUR85. Rising incomes, demographic change and recent reforms are expected to drive annual premium growth of around +10.7% over the next decade.
Climate change is turning insurance affordability into a structural challenge for the industry. Insured NatCat losses are rising by +5–7% annually in real terms, while higher premiums are increasingly colliding with weakening household purchasing power. The result is widening protection gaps, pushing lower-income households out of coverage. As affordability deteriorates, more climate losses are shifting onto already strained public balance sheets. Preserving long-term insurability will require moving beyond repricing toward stronger adaptation incentives, resilience-focused underwriting, targeted affordability mechanisms and deeper public-private risk-sharing frameworks, supported by large-scale investment in climate adaptation and resilient infrastructure.