Revenue in the country’s insurance sector increased 26.7 percent in 2014 compared to the previous year, generating $53 million in total income, according to a report released on Wednesday by the Insurance Association of Cambodia (IAC).
The fledgling insurance market has grown by double digits every year since 2009, but last year saw the largest increase during that period.
A total of $18.3 million in claims by customers were incurred by the industry last year, or 34.6 percent of revenue, on par with 2013, according to the report.
At $18 million, fire premiums continued to represent the largest portion of revenue, rising 32 percent year-on-year and comprising a third of total intake.
Engineering, health, motor-vehicle, personal-accident and miscellaneous premiums grew at between 12 percent and 21 percent in 2014. Marine cargo insurance premiums grew 316 percent compared to the year before, but at $2.9 million made up just 13 percent of total revenue.
Oeurn Chanvisoth, secretary-general of IAC, said he was optimistic that the insurance market “will keep growing more.”
Mr. Chanvisoth said the growth in marine-cargo insurance was due to surging demand for imported vehicles.
Ty Atith, director of operations at Cambodia Reinsurance, said the growth in the sector last year beat his firm’s expectations.
But Mr. Atith said profit margins in the health and motor-vehicle insurance sectors could start to shrink due to the high rate of road accidents, and that competition among the country’s seven insurance firms would keep premiums low.
“If we raise the rate, [customers] will go somewhere else,” he said.
