2023-07-19 02:15:14
Insurers are taking advantage of the lack of a deposit war in big banks to Make your august with the life insurance savings. Clients look to these companies for products that give them profitability at a time of rising interest rates in which the deposits of the large banks have not returned. so much that insurers have shot up their premiums by more than 70% for savings life insurance only in the first five months of the year.
The number is very significant. “spectacular”in the words of experts from Mapfre Economics. In fact, this growth has guided the evolution of insurance in general in the first five months of 2023.
Savings life insurance “has become the growth engine of Spanish insurance”, with a 71.6% increase in premiums in just five months, changing its trend of the previous months and years, as pointed out by the studies service. It is an insurance whose premiums used to grow much less. In 2022, for example, they advanced just 4.4%.
[Mapfre registra una subida superior al 50% en la venta de seguros de ahorro gracias a la escasez de depósitos a plazo]
Insurers have taken advantage of the rise in interest rates that the European Central Bank (ECB) has been undertaking for a year in a context in which the large financial institutions, those with the majority market share, have not entered into a war for deposits. Their excess liquidity is a disincentive for them to do so and they transfer customer savings to other more profitable products, such as investment funds (which also generate commissions).
Not only have insurers sold savings insurance taking advantage of this circumstance, but customers demand this kind of product, which exceed 3% profitability. That’s how I explained it Fernando Matafinancial director of Mapfrea few days ago at a meeting with investors organized by Renta 4.
[Las aseguradoras se ofrecen para rentabilizar el ahorro y reemplazar a la banca ante la poca oferta de depósitos]
“We have not sold, it has been dispatched, that is the reality, the products were finished in 24 hours”Mata pointed out. In his opinion, “the insurance sector has filled a gap in society that the financial sector was not providing because the excess liquidity that existed meant that deposits were not being remunerated.”
In the specific case of Mapfre, as Mata himself explained at this meeting, the insurer’s savings insurance sales reached €1 billion in the first quarter, which means ten times more than the usual volume in other quarters.
future evolution
Between 100 and 150 million euros is the “normal” volume of sales of this product in Spain by the insurer, to which Mata believes it will return. However, the evolution of savings insurance in the coming months will depend on the commercial policy undertaken by the banks in relation to term deposits.
For the moment, large entities are reluctant to give remuneration through this channel (not so with others), although the authorities are pressing them to do so, even threatening to force them by law. If these pressures have an effect or if the banks decide to do so on their own initiative, it could be a deposit war that would change the evolution of savings insurance sales. This was explained by Mapfre Economics on Tuesday in the presentation of a report on the evolution of insurance in 2022.
“At this moment, under the current conditions and if there were no changes, what we foresee is that these growth rates observed in the first months of the year could be maintained in the rest, but I insist: always with the caveat that there may be a competitive reaction from other managers to change this situation in an important way,” said Manuel Aguileradirector general of the study service.
“Particularly, a war of deposits“he added Ricardo Gonzalez, Director of Sector Studies and Regulation Analysis at Mapfre Economics. All in all, both point out that it is difficult to anticipate the evolution of savings insurance in the coming months given that one of the main factors cannot be known in advance: what the banks will do with their commercial policy.
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