Summary
Major players in the critical illness insurance market are China Life Insurance, Allianz, Ping An Insurance, Aviva, Legal & General, China Pacific Insurance, Prudential plc, New China Life Insurance, Aegon, and AXA.
The global critical illness insurance market is expected to grow from $119.41 billion in 2020 to $120.9 billion in 2021 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 1.2%. The growth is mainly due to the companies rearranging their operations and recovering from the COVID-19 impact, which had earlier led to restrictive containment measures involving social distancing, remote working, and the closure of commercial activities that resulted in operational challenges. The market is expected to reach $201.1 billion in 2025 at a CAGR of 13.6%.
The critical illness insurance market consists of sales of critical illness insurance by entities (organizations, sole traders, and partnerships) that are engaged in directly underwriting critical illness cover or a dread disease policy, which is an additional insurance coverage to cover those overruns where traditional health insurance may fall short. Only goods and services traded between entities or sold to end consumers are included.
The critical illness insurance market covered in this report is segmented by type into individual insurance, family insurance. It is also segmented by application into cancer, heart attack, stroke, others.
The regions covered in this report are Asia-Pacific, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, North America, South America, Middle East and Africa.
Lack of awareness about critical illness insurance is hindering the growth of the global critical insurance market.Most of the critical illness insurances are included with term plans.
Most people are aware of the life insurance plans but are not much aware of the term plans.A term plan is a type of life insurance plan for a fixed tenure that includes critical illness cover as an inbuilt feature in the actual base plan.
Besides being economical, benefits provided on the demise of the policyholder are more in the case of term plan when compared to the maturity benefits offered by life insurance plans.For instance, a research study published in Economic Times, in 2020 says that only 1 out of 5 insurance holders have term insurance in urban India which is 65% population of the urban India.
This is mostly due to the lack of awareness in people about term plans offered by insurers that also include a critical illness cover.
In December 2018, AIG Life Limited, a UK subsidiary of AIG Life & Retirement, acquired Ellipse for an undisclosed amount.With this acquisition, AIG life will build a strong combined presence in the UK by distributing both group and individual protection insurance products to its consumers through financial intermediaries, employee benefits consultants, and partnerships.
Ellipse is a specialist group life, critical illness, and income protection provider in the UK.
The increased prevalence of critical diseases is driving the global critical illness insurance market.Treatment for critical illness such as cancer incurs huge amount and therefore having critical illness insurance can be beneficial to lower the burden of the treatment cost.
The insurance service providers provide a lump-sum payment to the policyholder upon diagnosis of the critical disease.Some other types of common critical illnesses include heart attack, stroke, and coronary artery bypass.
According to the cancer profile 2020 report by WHO, the incidence of global cancer in 2018 was reported as 18.07 million and the deaths that occurred in the year was 9.55 million. Therefore, the growing prevalence of critical illness is expected to drive the global critical illness insurance market.
An increase in the range of critical illnesses covered in the critical illness insurance policies is a major trend shaping the critical insurance market.Major insurance companies are focusing on adding coverage for many new diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, and motor neuron diseases besides cancer, stroke, coronary artery bypass, and heart attack.
For instance, Reliance Standard, a subsidiary of Tokio Marine Group has created stand-alone triggers by adding new clinical conditions that doubled the critical illness policy sales between 2012 and 2017. This plan allows maximum flexibility by removing categories that helps the insured access more benefits.
The countries covered in the market report are Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Russia, South Korea, UK, USA.
