Sources of capital on the continent

Insurance assets under management in Africa

The insurance industry is an important source of capital for investment on the continent. Insurance companies receive premiums from policyholders and invest in capital markets to have sufficient capital to pay back claims as they arise. This makes insurance firms key institutional investors. Insurance firms are heavily regulated, in terms of the assets that they can invest in; and this impacts the extent to which capital can be allocated.

Size of insurance markets – frontier markets

Most of the African countries in our analysis are classified as frontier markets, except for Egypt and South Africa. The insurance market size in the frontier markets is considerably small and largely underdeveloped. This is evidenced by the low insurance premiums, share of world market and insurance density present in the frontier markets. It is interesting to note that Morocco, Kenya, Namibia and Tunisia have relatively high insurance penetration rates, which are comparable to the emerging market penetration rates; which indicates that although these markets have low levels of GPW, these are reasonable in relation to the size of their respective economies.

Frontier Markets
Country

Premium volume (USD m) Insurance penetration
(Premiums as % GDP)
Share of world market 2018E(%) Insurance density (Premiums per capita in USD)
2018E Total business Life business Non-life business Total business Life business Non-life business
Vietnam 5 839 2.42 1.58 0.85 0.11 61 39 21
Morocco 4 579 3.88 1.82 2.06 0.09 127 59 67
Kenya 2 134 2.37 0.96 1.42 0.04 42 17 25
Lebanon 1 604 2.95 0.96 1.98 0.03 269 88 181
Nigeria 1 220 0.33 0.15 0.18 0.02 6 3 3
Algeria 1 189 0.68 0.06 0.62 0.02 28 3 26
Namibia 1 009 7.25 5.19 2.06 0.02 390 279 111
Tunisia 870 2.14 0.46 1.69 0.02 75 16 59
Zimbabwe 735 3.91 2.44 1.47 0.01 43 27 16
Source: Sigma 3/2019 World insurance: the great pivot east continues, RisCura analysis
Size of insurance markets – frontier markets Download the graph PDF (26KB)