Democratic Republic of Congo

Axco provides details on the life insurance sector including The Democratic Republic of the Congo 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 The Democratic Republic of the Congo, 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 The Democratic Republic of the Congo 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 Democratic Republic of the Congo 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 

In March 2019 Rawsur Life SA, part of the Group Rawji, received a licence to operate in the market and was followed in June 2020 by Afriassur SA. Prior to this the only company to have been approved to write life business in the market was the national insurer SONAS, although this approval is believed to have now disappeared since the new insurance code requires a separation of non-life from life activities.

The only available market statistics on life business show that SONAS wrote a very small amount of business, amounting to just CDF 707.55mn (USD 373,368) in 2014. Traditionally other life ....

Under the social security system there is an old age, disability and survivors' pension for employed persons and certain public sector employees not covered elsewhere. Self-employed persons can also be part of the scheme on a voluntary basis but few within the informal sector, (which accounts for over 80% of employment), can afford to do so. This means only 15% of the population had any sort of pension coverage according Pension Watch in 2018.

Benefits under the state scheme are not considered generous and the country's economic challenges, political uncertainty over ....

The minister for public health has indicated that it is the intention to widen the provision of healthcare to more of the population at some stage via a system of universal healthcare (couverture sanitaire universelle - CSU). Up to now the focus has been on providing medicines to mothers and children under five but it is hoped that some way will be found to cover those in the informal sector who have no cover currently. Budgetary constraints exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic mean this remains a challenge.

There is little information about the volume of private health business generated by the market. SONAS, the only insurer ....