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.
Data as of 2024 (OECD), 2024 (EIOPA)
Insurance penetration: premiums as a share of GDP
Total gross 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
Insurance density: premiums per person
The same markets in per-capita US dollars. Density is a level, not a ratio: exchange-rate moves shift it even when local premium volumes do not, so year-to-year swings for non-dollar countries partly reflect the dollar. Median density across the 58 recent reporters is $819 per person; the United States is at $10,885.
Source: OECD Insurance Statistics (Insurance indicators) Density = direct gross premiums per capita, USD (measure DST). Methodology
Penetration trajectories in the large 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
How much capital stands behind it: EU/EEA solvency
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 direct gross 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.