Freedom of insurance
Photo by: Greg Demarque/Executive
The Lebanese insurance industry seems to be in need of new energy. Not only in terms of its objective to participate in the covers of the future oil and gas industry, but also in its fundamental development of company structures and legal infrastructure.
With low growth in insurance premiums – some 4 percent in 2015 according to the annual report by the insurance association and also 4 percent by the end of the third quarter of 2016 in year-to-date terms – insurers are hanging on, some perhaps by the skin of their teeth. It seems that 2015 and 2016 were two of the most difficult years in terms of growth since the old insurance law was updated – but hardly made fit for modern times – in a lengthy process in the 1980s and 1990s.
Executive Magazine
Lebanese insurers seek to ward off economic pressures and evil opinion spells
The best thing to say about the performance of insurance companies in the year to date is that they are slowly reappearing from what seemed an organizational stupor that during the past year enveloped the sector up to the level of the regulator, the Insurance Control Commission (ICC). In the first quarter of this year, a few insurance companies have become newly active in terms of communicating with their market, and the insurance association has begun strategizing on how to re-assert the sector’s public perception, which had taken several beatings during the past year. After a period of providing information very haltingly, the ICC as the presently sole source of quotable data on Lebanese insurers, has released its quarterly report on sector results in Q4 of 2020 on March 15.