Insurance corporations are fiscal intermediaries which offering directly insurance or reinsurance services, providing fiscal protection from possible hazards inwards the time to come.
Under an insurance policy, the insurance corporation undertakes to compensate the policyholder for losses caused by a pre-defined case against a fee, or “premium”.
Typically, insurance corporations may embrace specific kinds of events.
- In the case of lifeinsurance policies the case is normally the expiry or a deterioration of the wellness of the insured mortal. Life insurance contracts are frequently held to salve money over a longer fourth dimension bridge together with sometimes for retirement.
- Non-life insurance policies protect against risks of financial loss. They cover expenses the policyholder incurs from damages to health or holding (policies typically offered are medical expenses, or theatre, motor vehicle in addition to burn down insurance), as well asfiscal losses similar a loss of income.
- A especial case of non-life insurance is reinsurance. Under a reinsurance contract an insurance corporation agrees to take on the run a risk related to a policy held past some other insurance corporation against a premium. If a payment obligation arises, the reinsurance corporation has to pay.
Why are they of import?
Insurance policies are an important cornerstone of many households’ income as well as wealth inward Europe. Insurancecorporations also play an of import role in financial markets equally institutional investors together with investment targets. For these reasons, the ECB collects statistical information on the residuum sheets too other financial info of insurance corporations for its analyses of the financial arrangement together with household wealth.
Insurance corporation statistics
Our insurance corporation statistics combine data on insurance corporations in euro area countries inward 1 harmonised set up of statistics.
Ourstatistics exhibit sort out information according to the insurance corporations’ operating license. This split results inward iv reporting sectors: reinsurance, life, non-life in addition to composite insurance. Reinsurance corporations can only engage in (life as well as non-life) reinsurance business organization. Composite insurance corporations handle both life together with non-life operating licenses.
Data on insurance corporations are divided into three sections:
- remainder canvass
- The remainder sheet sectionpresents the assets together with liabilities data for reinsurance, life, non-life in addition to composite insurance corporations, as well equally more detailed information for the insurance corporation population as a whole (“total insurance corporations”).
The asset section provides info on the holdings of insurance corporations: it shows the investments of the paid premiums in addition to other liabilities, every bit well equally loans provided. It likewise shows the claims that insurance corporations power have againstother parties – for illustration claims against reinsurance firms resulting from reinsurance contracts.
The liabilities department provides info on claims against euro surface area insurance corporations. These liabilities mainly consist of the funds (“insurance technical reserves”) that insurance corporations hold pose aside to fulfil their future payment obligations towards policyholders. Liabilities as well include insurance corporations’ equity, loans received as well as other fiscalobligations.
premiums, claims as well as acquisition expenses
- The premiums, claims in addition to acquisition expenses department presents fiscal information that is closely related to the insurance policies. Premiums name to the payments policyholders regularly transfer to the insurance corporation in lodge to be covered in the case of losses. Claims incurred, or only claims, are the financial obligations arising from both insurance together with reinsurance. Acquisition expenses relate to the costs aninsurance corporation incurs when issuing new contracts.
large insurance groups
- The big insurance groups department contains data collected from just about ninety insurance groups operating inwards the European Economic Area (EEA) under the Solvency II regime. These data consist of indicators together with growth ratios that the European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB) compiles for the purpose of monitoring fiscal stability.
Harmonised euro surface area insurance corporation (IC) statistics areavailable every bit of the tertiary quarter of 2016. They replace the non-harmonised IC statistics that were previously published past the ECB equally function of a broader euro area insurance corporation together with pension fund (ICPF) statistical dataset. ICPF statistics are available for the reference periods from the outset quarter of 2008 to the minute quarter of 2016 on the Statistical Data Warehouse.
Data and reporting
Fordetailed information on the available insurance corporations data serial in addition to the relevant reporting framework, come across Data together with reporting.