保险业势头强劲，但结构性挑战依然存在

Insurers can increase relevance and expand the marketby lowering the cost of risk. By Andrew Schwedel, Sean O'Neill, Harshveer Singh,and Tanja Brettel At a Glance. The insurance industry broadly delivered strong premium growth andprofitability in 2025, but this was largely a cyclical performance.. Long-term challenges remain unresolved: Penetration is low, affordability isstrained, and investors question insurers’ ability to generate durable valuecreation.. The basis of competition is shifting to firms that can lower the cost of riskand build advantaged positions in a more fragmented insuranceecosystem.. To improve growth and relevance, insurers will need to drive down the costof risk across four areas: claims, distribution, operating expenses, andcapital. “Enjoy it while you can” might be the catchphrase for the insurance industryin 2025. Insurers had a strong year, with premiums growing above historicaltrends across most business lines. Profitability improved as well. This recentperformance is largely cyclical, however, and not indicative of long-termhealth. Insurers face major strategic challenges ahead—namely, turningtechnology, distribution, and capital innovation into structurally lower cost ofrisk and superior long-term value creation. Premium growth during the year was expected to exceed that of the pastdecade in every region except South America and across property and casualty(P&C), life, and health (see Figure 1). Because of reporting lags, full-year 2025data has not yet been released in many countries. Figure 1 Insurers posted strong premium growth in 2025 Profitability rose as well. P&C businesses benefited from rate increases and abenign year for catastrophe losses (see Figure 2). In the life business, positiveunderlying factors included a favorable interest rate/capital marketsenvironment along with an aging population that increases the need forguaranteed-income products. Figure 2 What lies behind investor skepticism Among publicly traded insurers, shareholder returns lagged broader equitymarket indices in 2025, with the MSCI World Insurance Index 2 percentagepoints lower than the MSCI World Index (though insurance stocks in Europeoutperformed the broad European market by 11 percentage points). Andinvestor skepticism persists because the industry’s structural challengesremain unresolved. Investors generally expect a decline in value growthbeyond the next 18 months (see Figure 3). The industry faces three major challenges: difficulties around affordabilityand access, digital gains that don’t translate into economic advantage, andfragmenting value chains. Difficulties around affordability and access:P&C coverage has become lessaffordable for many households, especially on the heels of a multiyear hardmarket that drove up rates in home and auto lines. In life markets, access has diminished as both product complexity and the up-market migration of advisers have created a significant gap in advice. Over thepast decade, life penetration has beenflat or declining (see Figure 4). Figure 4 Yet while ownership of retail life insurance has declined,consumers’ self-reported need for protection has increased, a recent US survey by Bain andLIMRA found. Commonly cited barriers include lack of accessibility tostraightforward information and difficultyfinding a trustedfinancialprofessional. Digital gains that don’t translate into economic advantage:Customerallegiance has improved for many insurers in some regions such as Europe,especially large companies that can use data and technology to producehigher-value customer engagement. But that’s not always translating intofavorable behavior. For instance, the levels of switching providers in US homeand auto policies has ticked up in recent years. Figure 5 Source: Aura As with other industries, insurers are accelerating their investments in AI,largely focused on productivity and cost reduction. But while direct writtenpremiums doubled over the past decade, expense ratios dropped by only 1percentage point. One possible leading indicator of change may be a nearly50% decline in hiring since 2022, which has touched all functions (see Figure5). Fragmenting value chains:Fragmentation is playing out along a fewdimensions. First, balance sheets are becoming more separable from the restof the business. Reinsurance continues to outgrow the broader industry, with28% premium growth from 2019 through 2024 (including sidecars andinsurance-linked securities) vs. 24% for the industry as a whole. US asset managers have more than doubled their share offixed annuity salessince 2018, and there is opportunity for further capital relief in asset-intensivelife and annuity lines as more alternative asset managers pursue insurancebalance sheets as a source of permanent capital. In P&C, there is anopportunity to increase capacity and de-risk as recently illustrated by theemergence of catastrophe bonds for data center risks. Another dimension involves distributors