Insurance in Poland
Both the life insurance segment, and non-life insurance segment reported very good results in terms of premium income. 66 domestic insurance companies operating in 2008 gathered during a year nearly 60 billion PLN premiums. The result was for about 36.6 percent better than a year before.
It should also be added that there are more than 500 insurers in Poland operating on the basis of the so-called notification, in accordance with the principle of a single European passport. However, no institution carries out statistics relating to business of the notified companies.
According to the report of the European insurance and reinsurance federation (CEA), Poland takes now the 11th place in Europe in terms of premiums collected annually (16.9 billion). This puts our country in the same league as Denmark, Sweden and Austria.
Currently, an average Pole’s premium is more than 1.5 thousand PLN, while in 2007 it was around 1.2 thousand PLN. The Polish market is still dominated by several major insurers. The first five companies in the segment of life insurance control nearly 70 percent of the entire market share, while in the property segment they control 71 percent.
In 2008, there were more than 29.5 thousand employees hired by the Polish insurance companies, which was 0.55 percent of all employees in the enterprise sector (according to CSO data for December 2007).
Moreover, insurers also worked with over 55 thousand freelance insurance agents. The year 2008 brought no major changes in terms of number of employees. There were 7.3 thousand people employed in the first department by the end of year 2008, which is 0.5 percent less than a year before. Property insurers employed 22.3 thousand people, which was 3.5 percent less than a year before.