Thai insurers are forecasting an increase of 20 percent this year.
The insurance news from Thailand is now expecting that the industry in the country will be seeing record growth of around 20 percent in 2012, which has been primarily driven by the increase of non-life coverage sector following the tremendous flooding in 2011.
Sales of new cars have also reached record levels due 
to government incentives.
First time car buyers have given a notable boost to the demand for auto coverage, bringing it to never before seen levels. Insurance news from the starting half of the year showed that there had been a notable year over year increase in premiums, which were up 19.4 percent, bringing them to 267 billion baht.
This brought their total up to 84.6 billion baht. On the other hand, life premiums grew by 17.8 percent over the same time in 2011. This allowed them to reach 182 billion baht. According to the Office of the Insurance Commission (OIC) secretary general, Pravej Ongartsittigul, “This is the second year where growth of non-life insurance has exceeded life insurance.”
Insurance news for the second half of the year is only expected to get better. Cyclical factors should lead to a continued or increased growth this year. In the first half of the year, 36.3 percent of the total premiums collected were at Bancassurance. The year before, that firm took in about a 32 percent share of the total.
The agents’ insurance news showed that they took in 56.4 percent of the total life premiums in the year, which was down from 2011, when they accounted for 60.8 percent. Among non-life products, agents were still those who brought in the majority of policies that were written.
The first half of 2012 saw claims payments worth 294 billion baht, according to the OIC, as a result of the flooding from last year. That disaster represented 65.2 percent of the total damage claims for the year, which were worth 451 billion baht. About this news, Pravej Ongartsittigul stated that although these payouts represented only 70 percent of what had been anticipated, there was a much broader scope to the damage claims than there has been in any other natural disaster in recent years.
