There are a number of ways to rank the size of insurance companies. Companies can be measured by their market capitalization (the value of the company on a stock exchange) or by using sales figures, such as net premiums written in a year or how many policies were sold.
Insurance companies are important players in the global financial economy, although they may not be as flashy as investment banks or hedge funds.
Insurance companies come in many sizes and specialize in different policy lines, from health to life to property & casualty.
Here we compare some of the largest insurers by market cap and by premium sales.
Largest by Market Capitalization
Investors can buy shares of publicly traded companies in the insurance industry. The largest insurance companies as of 2018 by market capitalization on the world stock exchanges were:
Not all insurance companies are publicly traded. In fact, many insurers are structured as mutual companies where policy holders of participating policies are essentially partial owners of the company. The mutual company model for an insurance company dates back hundred of years, and there are certain benefits conferred on policyholders that do not exist with publicly traded (stock company) insurers.
Largest Insurance Companies by Sales and Product Line
It is useful to differentiate between the type of insurance, or line, that is being considered when considering the largest insurance companies. Using sales data is helpful as some of the largest insurance companies in the United States are not publicly traded and therefore their market value is not easily ascertained.
Property & Casualty
Property casualty insurers write policies covering property such as real estate, dwellings, cars and other vehicles. They also write policies dealing with liabilities that may be incurred by accident or negligence related to those properties to defray the cost of lawsuits or medical damages resulting from such incidents.
The top U.S. property casualty companies in 2018 by net premiums written (the amount of money that non-life policies can expect to receive over the life of the contract, less commissions and costs) are:
Life Insurance companies promise to pay out a lump sum benefit upon the death of the insured. Although actuarial science has created mortality tables to accurately estimate the future liability of policies to be paid, having financial strength ensures that these companies can meet all of their obligations while still earning a profit.
Life Insurance companies in the U.S. can be ranked by direct premium written (the amount of new policies written directly and not re-insured). For 2018:
Health insurance companies provide policies to cover all or part of policyholder's health and medical costs. Policies may be purchased individually or through an employer. Technically, the United States government is the largest health insurance provider in America through the Medicare program, Social Security and with Medicaid administered by individual states.
The largest non-government sponsored U.S. health insurance companies measured by total direct premium collected in 2016 was:
(Source: NAIC. Note: The sales data on insurance companies is from 2016, the last year of available data.)
The Bottom Line
Ranking the largest insurance companies can be done in a number of ways. Shares of publicly traded companies can be bought to help build a well-diversified investment portfolio that has exposure to the financial and healthcare sectors. Identifying which types of insurance a company primarily deals with helps determine which firms are competitors and which really are not. Looking at sales figures, or premiums collected in a year, one can also see how public companies stack up against privately held or mutual companies which make up a large segment of the industry.
