Life insurance experiences growth in Latin America; risk-based oversight is needed

Life insurance is the fastest growing sector in several Latin American insurance markets. Alex Davis reports on the product mix in the region and, with regulators long-since realising that such growth requires a move towards more risk-based systems of oversight, how risk management is changing for Latin America-based insurers

Hand-in-hand with an emerging country’s developing economy and rising gross domestic product (GDP) comes the growth of the same country’s insurance market. It is a straightforward equation: as people get wealthier, they want to protect that wealth and it is a trend illustrated throughout the most prominent emerging markets in Latin America. At the forefront of this growth in the region’s insurance markets has been the success of life insurance, which in some cases has proved to be rather