Page 294 - India Insurance Report 2023- BIMTECH

282 India Insurance Report - Series II

Enabling Competence Building with

Insurance: Case of Thailand

- Voravate Chonlasin
31 Executive Director, AIT Extention-Thailand

Overview of the Insurance Sector in Thailand

- The Thai insurance industry is a relatively small but growing part of the country’s financial services
sector. Insurance sector assets have grown from 10 percent of GDP in 2006 to over 22 percent of
GDP in 2016, constituting 9 percent of total financial sector assets. Similarly, between 2008 and 2017,
gross premiums written have grown at an average annual rate of approximately 16.9 percent,
substantially above nominal GDP growth of 9.9 percent during the same period. As a result, the
insurance penetration ratio has gradually increased from 3.63 percent in 2008 to 5.39 percent in 2017.

- Thailand is the world’s 29th largest insurance market. Insurance penetration is below Singapore (8.75
percent) but higher than most other countries in the region, including Malaysia, Indonesia, and Vietnam.

- The Thai insurance market is dominated by life insurance, which accounts for 73 percent of net
premiums written. About 72 percent of this total is made up of individual policies - largely endowment
policies encouraged by government tax incentives. The other 20 percent are group policies, largely
associated with employee benefit packages of employers. Personal accident and sickness policies may
be written by either life or non-life insurers, but these policies currently account for only 1 percent
of premiums written by life insurers and are written as riders on other products. All other forms of
life insurance account for about 7 percent of life insurance premiums written.

- The non-life sector accounts for 22 percent of premiums written. The largest portion of this business
is voluntary motor insurance policies which account for roughly 50 percent of the total. Property
insurance accounts for a further 16 percent of the market and compulsory motor insurance makes up
a further 8 percent. All other types of non-life policies make up about 26 percent of the market
including personal accident and sickness policies written by non-life insurers, marine aviation and
transit (approximately 2 percent of non-life premiums written), liability insurance (approximately 1
percent of premiums written) and all other classes (approximately 5 percent of premiums written).

1. Insurance Sector During COVID-19 Pandemic

- In 2021, Thailand’s non-life insurance industry grew by 5.2% from 2020, with total collected premiums
of THB 265,849 million in 2021, compared to THB 252,789 million in 2020. Overall, direct premiums
for most types of non-life insurance products increased in 2021. The significant growth in direct