Austria

Axco provides details on the life insurance sector including Austrian market participants, reinsurance and distribution channels. The reports describe classes of business from both individual and group life such as whole life, endowment, term life and unit-linked.
Information on non-life classes for example critical illness and private medical insurance.

The report describes the public and private healthcare system in Austria, the scope of cover, accessibility financing and provides an analysis of how the public and private systems complement each other.

Axco reports on the three pillars of Austrian pension provision.

• State pension benefits including benefit calculations and eligibility criteria 
• Workplace pension provision; types of schemes calculations eligibility and; tax implications
• Voluntary individual pension provision, type of products and tax implications

The Austria report provides an in-depth analysis of the regulatory framework governing social security as well as details on financing and eligibility. Information includes but is not limited to

• state pensions,
• permanent disability benefit
• occupational accident and disease
• maternity and paternity payments 

Summary and Trends

The life market is dominated by five groups: VIG, UNIQA, ERGO, Generali and Allianz, which together control almost 74% of the market. Most insurers have close links with banks and other financial institutions. It may also be noted that most insurers in the Austrian market are composites that have been in operation since before the formation of new composites was disallowed. Premium income for life insurance continued to fall in 2020 to a total premium income of EUR 5.4bn.

Summary and Trends

There are four types of pension arrangement in Austria. Market sources suggest that the book-reserves section of the market remains largely unchanged as the assets to back the pensions (typically for only one or two people including the owner) are part of the financing of the business and so not readily available for investment.

The major funded part of the market is through ...

Summary and Trends

PMI is written by non-life companies in Austria, while life companies may add hospitalisation and critical illness riders to other life products, but cannot write reimbursive PMI. This being said, most PMI is written by composite insurers.  Premiums continue to grow slowly but steadily and, in 2017, premiums for PMI grew overall by 3.8% to EUR 2.13bn (USD 2.40bn). The cost of benefits provided through PMI contracts has also been increasing ...