NEW YORK, NY, January 18, 2024 – ACORD, the standards-setting body for the global insurance industry, today released the results of the ACORD Global Insurance Stock Index 4Q2023 Update. The ACORD Global Insurance Stock Index tracks the performance of the world’s largest publicly traded insurance carriers, spanning the life and non-life sectors.
The ACORD Global Insurance Stock Index closed 2023 up 12.2% from 2022, lagging the global equity market, which finished with an increase of 19.9% over the same period.
ACORD reported that global headwinds included geopolitical conflicts, economic volatility, and the continued impact of inflation. Looking ahead to 2024, sustained rate adequacy, healthy investment returns, and favorable economic expectations should bode well for industry growth, profits, and relative share returns.
Regional takeaways include:
- North America: Underwriting discipline and improved investment gains drove performance across North America-based Property & Casualty carriers, while Life insurers benefited from improved demand for savings products and involvement in strong overseas markets.
- EMEA: Large-cap reinsurers delivered strong performance, as did EMEA-based global insurers with a favorable global footprint, often including business in high-performing Asian countries.
- LATAM & Caribbean: The region experienced substantial premium growth as carriers broadened their distribution scope beyond the traditional bancassurance model, with Latin America-based insurers showing the highest total returns of any region (+31%).
- Asia-Pacific: Widespread challenges in China including solvency requirements, life insurance sales, and the economy nearly erased significant gains for Asia-based insurers, resulting in significantly lower returns than other geographies.
The proprietary ACORD Global Insurance Stock Index is an extension of ACORD's Global Value Creation methodologies and corresponding studies across both P&C and Life. It is tracked in quarterly updates which analyze quarterly and annual change in share prices, and provide performance metrics and insights by line of business, geographic region, and company size. The returns are based on the market capitalization weighted average of individual company returns, based on local currencies.
The ACORD Global Insurance Stock Index is available as a free resource to ACORD members as part of our research and development area. To learn more about ACORD R&D, please visit acord.org/research.