The life insurance market in Botswana is set to grow faster than non-life business and this will represent 82 percent of total gross written premiums by 2022. BIHL Group Programmes Manager Teko Moumakwa says this is with consideration of rising non-communicable diseases, COVID-19 and other associated changes that have drastically shaped the industry. On the other hand, the non-life insurance segment in Botswana is considerably smaller than its life counterpart and is expected to account for merely 23.0 percent of total written insurance premiums by 2024.
Moumakwa says this will be driven by falling policy prices in the motor vehicle segment and low single-digit growth in the property segment, both of which are the largest non-life subsegments; together accounting for 63.6 percent of total non-life premiums in 2024. “The COVID-19 crisis shows no signs of disappearing any time soon, and will continue to affect the population’s disposable household income,” he says adding that this is therefore expected to weigh on demand for life and non-life insurance products in the short term. “The non-life sector is more heavily exposed than the life sector as motor and property insurance sectors are heavily procyclical. Unforeseen slumps in the price of key exports and GDP growth may affect this segment growth.”
Botswana insurance market is dominated by the life insurance sector. This sector is larger than the non-life insurance sector, with each accounting for 75 percent (life insurance) and 25 percent (non-life insurance) of the market, in 2018. Overall, written insurance premiums in Botswana remained relatively steady at P5.4 billion for two consecutive years in 2018 and 2019 falling short of projected growth of 7.7 percent.
