Swiss perspectives in 10 languages

Swiss insurers significantly increased profit in 2023

Swiss Re
Improved results were driven by the increase in profit at industry leader Swiss Re. Keystone-SDA

Swiss insurers can look back on a successful 2023. The aggregated annual profits of the insurance companies supervised by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) climbed by 78% to CHF13.6 billion ($16 billion).

+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

This is according to a report published by the supervisory authority on Wednesday.

One reason for the clear improvement in results was the good performance on the equity and bond markets. On average, insurers were able to improve the returns achieved on their investments to 2.95% from 1.4% in 2022, according to the report.

After two years of lower profits, reinsurers in particular clearly improved their annual result to CHF5.4 billion (2022: CHF500 million). This was driven by the increase in profit at industry leader Swiss Re. Non-life insurance (+18% to CHF6.9 billion) also grew significantly, while the increase in life insurance (+4% to CHF1.3 billion) was limited.

+ Swiss Re expects more cascading effects from natural disasters

Premium income also increased for non-life insurers (+19%) and reinsurers (+4%), while that of life insurers (-1.2%) declined. In non-life insurance and reinsurance, tariffs were increased further in view of inflation. Across the industry as a whole, the aggregate gross premium volume increased by 9.1% to CHF140.6 billion.

Meanwhile, the equity of all companies fell slightly by 0.7% to CHF82.9 billion, while the solvency ratios according to the Swiss Solvency Test (SST) fell on average by 16 percentage points from the previous very high level to 254%.

Translated from German by DeepL/ts

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.

If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, if you want to learn more about how we use technology, click here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.

Popular Stories

Most Discussed

News

Voting booklet

More

Content of voting booklet found to often decide Swiss votes

This content was published on The content of the voting booklet makes a difference of more than 15 percentage points on voting behaviour and hence voting results, according to a survey. This percentage is almost always decisive.

Read more: Content of voting booklet found to often decide Swiss votes
market index

More

Weak US stock markets drag down Swiss market

This content was published on The Swiss stock market came under significant pressure in early trading on Wednesday. The gloomy mood on Wall Street from the previous day spilled over onto the local stock market.

Read more: Weak US stock markets drag down Swiss market

In compliance with the JTI standards

More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative

You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!

If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.

SWI swissinfo.ch - a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR

SWI swissinfo.ch - a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR