Institutional investors

Insurance markets: who is covered, and how deeply

Insurers are one of the two great institutional-investor pools (the other, pension funds, lives on the pensions page). This page reads the OECD's insurance-indicator panel, 69 jurisdictions with data from 1983 to 2024: gross premiums, penetration (premiums over GDP), density (premiums per person), and the life share, plus the EU/EEA capital position from EIOPA's Solvency II statistics. Penetration in the recent cross-section runs from about 3.5% at the median to 33.0% in Luxembourg, a cross-border hub whose premiums are written on the whole EU market rather than its own 2024 GDP.

12.7%
US insurance penetration, 2024: premiums to GDP | rank 3 of 58; $10,885
US premiums per capita, 2024: density, USD; 3.5%
Median penetration: 58 recent reporters; 33.0%
Luxembourg, 2024: highest penetration; 244%
EEA solvency ratio, 2024: eligible own funds to SCR; 58
Countries in the cross-section: latest obs within 2y of 2024

Data as of 2024 (OECD), 2024 (EIOPA)

Institutional investors

Cross-border hubs top domestic markets on insurance penetration

Gross written premiums (life plus non-life) over GDP, each country at its own latest reporting year (shown per bar; only countries reporting since 2022 are ranked, which drops 10 stale reporters). The top of the table mixes two things: genuinely deep domestic markets (the United States at 12.7%, rank 3) and cross-border underwriting hubs like Luxembourg, where premiums written for the whole single market sit on a small national GDP.

Source: OECD Insurance Statistics (Insurance indicators) Penetration = gross written premiums / GDP, as published (measure PEN, total business). Each bar carries its own data year. Methodology

Institutional investors

US premiums per person exceed the recent-reporter median

Gross written premiums per person in US dollars, with each of the 58 recent-reporting economies at its latest observation. Median density is $819 per person; the United States is at $10,885. Exchange-rate moves shift this level even when local premium volumes do not.

Source: OECD Insurance Statistics (Insurance indicators) Density = gross written premiums per capita, USD (measure DST). Methodology

Institutional investors

Insurance penetration changes slowly across mature markets

Total penetration for six large markets, 1983 to 2024. Because penetration is a ratio of two domestic-currency aggregates, these lines are immune to exchange-rate noise; what they show instead is the slow structural drift of insurance relative to the economy. Gaps are years the country did not report to the OECD, left visible rather than interpolated.

Source: OECD Insurance Statistics (Insurance indicators) Unbalanced panel; line breaks mark unreported years. Methodology

The largest markets by premium volume

Gross premiums in USD, with the life / non-life split where the OECD serves it. The split omits composite insurers' unallocated business in some countries, so life plus non-life can fall short of the total. Across the 58 countries reporting a life share recently, the median life share of premiums is 40.7%.

Country	Year	Gross premiums, $B	Life, $B	Non-life, $B	Penetration	Density, $
United States	2024	4,102	1,668	2,434	12.7%	10,885
United Kingdom	2024	554	359	195	11.8%	6,186
France	2024	430	231	199	11.0%	5,066
Germany	2024	404	98	306	5.9%	3,269
Japan	2024	346	258	88	7.7%	2,668
Bermuda	2024	305	196	109	n/a	n/a
South Korea	2023	193	86	107	9.9%	3,519
Italy	2024	172	121	50	6.9%	2,790
Ireland	2024	116	50	66	11.7%	13,128
Netherlands	2024	102	14	88	8.3%	5,594
Switzerland	2024	92	27	65	6.7%	7,036
Taiwan	2024	86	76	9	10.8%	3,609

Source: OECD Insurance Statistics (Insurance indicators) Gross premiums (measure TGP), USD millions as published, shown in billions. Life + non-life can fall short of the total where composite business is unallocated. Methodology

Institutional investors

Even lower-tail EEA insurers stay above the solvency floor

Solvency II requires an insurer's eligible own funds to cover its Solvency Capital Requirement (SCR), calibrated to a 1-in-200-year loss; a ratio of 100% is the regulatory floor. The EEA aggregate ratio (summed own funds over summed SCR) has held between 244% and 263% since 2016, 244% in 2024. The band shows the 10th to 90th percentile of individual undertakings: even the 10th-percentile insurer holds well above the floor.

SCR coverage by country, 2024

Source: EIOPA Insurance Statistics (Solvency II, S.23.01 annual solo) Aggregate ratio per country (summed eligible own funds over summed SCR, all undertaking types, annual solo returns). 100% is the regulatory minimum. Methodology

Methodology and caveats

Definitions. Penetration is gross written premiums over GDP. Density is gross written premiums per capita in USD. The life share is life premiums over total premiums. All three are taken as published by the OECD (measures PEN, DST, LIS), not recomputed. The EIOPA solvency ratio is eligible own funds over the Solvency Capital Requirement from annual solo Solvency II returns (template S.23.01); the country and EEA headline values are aggregate ratios (summed numerators over summed denominators), and the percentile series describe the distribution across individual undertakings.

Sources and vintages. OECD Insurance Statistics, dataflow "Insurance indicators" (OECD.DAF.CM DSD_INS@DF_IND), pulled from the OECD SDMX API on 2026-07-18: 15,068 observations, 69 jurisdictions, annual data to 2024. EIOPA insurance statistics own-funds extract downloaded 2026-07-18 (EIOPA extraction of July 2025): 3,390 observations, 30 countries plus the EEA aggregate, 2016 to 2024. Both refresh on the annual tier.

Coverage caveats. The OECD panel is unbalanced: countries enter, leave, and lag at different years. Cross-sections on this page keep only countries whose latest observation is within 2 years of the panel's latest year (2024) and print each country's own year; trajectory charts leave unreported years as visible gaps. USD levels (premiums, density) embed exchange-rate conversion. Hub economies (Luxembourg, Ireland, Hong Kong) write cross-border business that inflates premiums relative to domestic GDP. The life / non-life split can omit unallocated composite business.

Attribution. OECD (2026), Insurance indicators, OECD Data Explorer, accessed 2026-07-18; display with attribution per the OECD terms and conditions. EIOPA Insurance Statistics, © European Union, reused with attribution. FinObservatory displays these statistics and does not redistribute the underlying files.

The other institutional-investor pool: funded pensions, including the countries whose pension assets exceed annual GDP and the US shift from defined benefit to defined contribution. Bank balance sheets live on banks.