In the fog
April 11, 2018
Assessing the insurance industry of Lebanon at the current junction of global insurance challenges, regional vagaries, domestic economic hurdles, and the country’s ongoing political issues is not without difficulty. Just as with the national economy, there are hopes and interesting prospects, but they are mainly just over the horizon whether in the reconstruction of war-torn Syria and Iraq, in the development of an oil industry, or in the infrastructure and investment programs that are being ambitiously pursued by the Lebanese state.
In the best of all possible worlds, where “tout est pour le mieux,” as Voltaire’s Pangloss never tires of assuring us, Lebanese insurance would of course be developing relentlessly, and managers would not ask for their companies to be mentioned editorially in magazines they advertise in. Alas, the world being as it is, and the Lebanese insurance sector not having released new performance numbers for about six months
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.