Life insurance premiums written on the European market 2010-2019

In 2019, the amount of direct gross written premiums on the European life insurance market was 700 billion euros. This below the 753 billion euros recorded in 2018, which also happened to be the highest value recorded over the eight-year observation period. By comparison, in 2011, companies offering life insurance reported over 632 billion euros in premiums.

Leading life insurance markets

The United Kingdom had the highest value of life insurance premiums among all European countries in 2018, followed by France and Italy. Together, the top three countries accounted for more than 60 percent of the European market. In terms of investment portfolio, the top three markets were France, the UK and Germany with a total value of over 5.1 billion euros.

Insurance market concentration in Europe

Market concentration is an easy way to illustrate how the market within an industry is distributed among companies of various sizes. In 2018, Germany, Sweden and Italy were the counties with the least concentrated life insurance market in Europe. In all three countries, the combined market share of the three largest life insurance companies did not exceed 35 percent.