Swiss insurers significantly increased profit in 2023

Improved results were driven by the increase in profit at industry leader Swiss Re. Keystone-SDA

Swiss insurers can look back on a successful 2023. The aggregated annual profits of the insurance companies supervised by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) climbed by 78% to CHF13.6 billion ($16 billion).

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This is according to a report published by the supervisory authority on Wednesday.

One reason for the clear improvement in results was the good performance on the equity and bond markets. On average, insurers were able to improve the returns achieved on their investments to 2.95% from 1.4% in 2022, according to the report.

After two years of lower profits, reinsurers in particular clearly improved their annual result to CHF5.4 billion (2022: CHF500 million). This was driven by the increase in profit at industry leader Swiss Re. Non-life insurance (+18% to CHF6.9 billion) also grew significantly, while the increase in life insurance (+4% to CHF1.3 billion) was limited.

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Premium income also increased for non-life insurers (+19%) and reinsurers (+4%), while that of life insurers (-1.2%) declined. In non-life insurance and reinsurance, tariffs were increased further in view of inflation. Across the industry as a whole, the aggregate gross premium volume increased by 9.1% to CHF140.6 billion.

Meanwhile, the equity of all companies fell slightly by 0.7% to CHF82.9 billion, while the solvency ratios according to the Swiss Solvency Test (SST) fell on average by 16 percentage points from the previous very high level to 254%.

Translated from German by DeepL/ts

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