Ireland’s insurance sector has grown steadily in recent times with total assets hitting €303 million (US$375mn) in the second-quarter of 2017, with the foreign proportion of the sector being extremely important to premium income, according to a signed article from the first Quarterly Bulletin of 2018, published by the Central Bank of Ireland.
According to the article, ‘Insurance Corporations Statistics in Ireland: Introducing the New Quarterly Statistics,’ which introduces a new set of statistics that will be published on a quarterly basis from the end of March 2018, insurance corporations accounted for 6% of total assets within the Irish financial sector in 2016, compared with a euro average of 11%.
Over the last five years, the insurance industry has grown steadily as a sub-sector of the Irish financial sector with assets hitting €303 million in Q2 2017, which is equivalent to 110% of gross domestic product (GDP), which is the third highest in the euro area, according to the article.
At the end of June 2017, there were 243 insurance corporations operating in the Irish marketplace, with 202 of these being head offices or subsidiaries, with the remaining 41 being domestic branches.
Life insurers make up the large majority of the sector, accounting for 79% of the total assets, which is followed by reinsurance at 13%, and then non-life insurers at 8%.
Highlighting just how important foreign business is to premium income in the Irish insurance sector, the foreign share of the industry in Ireland accounts for 85% of total premiums written, with just 15% of premiums being earned domestically.











