Small to medium insurers outshine market leaders with double-digit inflow surge

According to a report by Plan For Life, risk market inflows only saw an incremental rise of 0.7 per cent from $18.2 billion to $18.3 billion in the year to September 2024.

This is due in part to a 2.4 per cent drop for individual risk lump-sum premiums, which make up more than half of all risk premiums, coupled with a 1.3 per cent decrease of individual risk income premiums for the period. However, this was offset by a 5.3 per cent increase in group risk premiums.

Notably, several small and medium providers saw double-digit risk premium inflow jumps for the period, with MetLife increasing by 28.2 per cent, NobleOak up 21.4 per cent and ClearView up 10.1 per cent.

Australia’s market leaders only experienced modest growth for the period, with AIA Australia and Zurich up by 3.7 per cent and 2.3 per cent, respectively. Meanwhile, TAL, the largest market shareholder (34.2 per cent), increased inflows just 2.1 per cent from around $6.13 billion in the year to September 2023 to $6.25 billion in the same 2024 period.

However, Resolution Life was not so fortunate, with inflows tanking 35.3 per cent, in addition to losing 2.6 per cent market share compared with the previous 12-month period, while MLC Life took a small loss of inflows (-1.2 per cent) and other companies’ inflows dropped 21.7 per cent.

Overall annual sales in the risk market saw a 21.8 per cent hike for the year to September, which Plan For Life largely attributed to reported group risk sales more than doubling.

MetLife reported a massive increase of 189.9 per cent in their risk sales for the period, while TAL (76.5 per cent), ART (20.4 per cent) and NobleOak (20.2 per cent) also saw notable increases. According to the report, the big jumps from TAL and MetLife were largely in respect of group risk mandate movements.

Meanwhile, Resolution, Zurich and AIA Australia all took double-digit losses in risk sales, down 18.2 per cent, 12 per cent and 10.7 per cent, respectively.