The inflection point for market takeoff in life insurance is relatively high: sales rarely surge until GDP per capita reaches about $30,000. Higher income levels, particularly when reinforced by cultural preferences for locking in financial security, correlate strongly with insurance-market penetration. As emerging markets get richer over the next decade, they will fuel more than 80 percent of life-insurance companies’ global growth.
While far from deterministic, GDP per capita above $30,000 seems to correlate with higher life-insurance penetration.
For more on our research, see “Life journey: Winning in the life-insurance market,” March 2014.
