Backed by a resilient economic growth, increasing risk awareness and supportive regulatory reforms, India’s insurance market is expected to grow in real terms at a 6.9 per cent compound annual growth rate over 2026 to 2030, higher than major emerging and advanced insurance markets, said reinsurance company Swiss Re.
The Chinese insurance market is expected to grow by around 4 per cent and the US by 2 per cent over the same period.
Releasing a report on “India’s economic and insurance market outlook”, the Zurich-based reinsurer, among the world’s largest, said the country’s insurance sector is poised for a steady growth through 2026 and thereafter, underpinned by mutually supporting economic, regulatory and demographic drivers.
“The recent regulatory reforms such as increasing the foreign direct investment (FDI) limit to 100 per cent, allowing mergers of non-life and life insurance companies, and reducing the new capital fund requirement for foreign reinsurance branches in India would be the driving force behind the growth over the next five years,” Mahesh Puttaiah, Head – Insurance Market Analysis, Swiss Re Institute, told businessline.
Swiss Re expects the life insurance premiums to increase by 3.4 per cent in Calendar Year 2025 and then 3.5 per cent in CY 2026. Over the longer period of time, that is between 2026-30, it expects the premiums to grow by 6.8 per cent.
GST reform
The recent GST reform exempting individual life insurance premiums should improve affordability across term, savings and unit-linked products, while insurance companies’ pivot toward higher-value offerings and larger ticket sizes supports margins.
For the non-life insurance segment, premiums are expected to grow by 2.2 percent in CY 2025 and then 4.1 percent in CY 2026. And, between 2026-2030, the reinsurance company expects this segment to grow by 7.3 percent. These projected growth rates are all in real terms, which are corrected for inflation.
“There are a couple of factors which we expect would drive this overall growth. First of all, the strong economy. We expect the economy to be resilient. This economic growth and economic development are one of the key drivers of the insurance industry in any economy,” said Puttaiah, adding, in India there has been an increasing or expanding risk awareness, especially after the COVID.
“And most importantly the supportive regulations that the country has been having because of insurance regulator IRDAI, which has been bringing in a couple of regulatory reforms that we expect should really boost the growth. One of them is the Insurance for All by 2047,” he added.
On whether the country’s insurance sector has space for more players, given the experience of developed economies, Amitabha Ray, Market Head, Swiss Re India, said, “It is a free market, and if an investor is looking at the Indian growth story and also the aim of Insurance for all by 2047 and all the policy changes which are designed to push towards that goal, I think foreign players will do their calculations and make their strategies…people will do their evaluation and then make that decision. But it’s all pointing toward the direction that this is helpful.”
The country needs the capacity to develop, and all the investments that are required have to be backed by insurance. “Natural catastrophe exposure is rising with over $26 trillion in property values exposed to a variety of perils, so there is opportunity here for all and I am pretty sure that people will evaluate and find this space for themselves,” Ray added.
Natural catastrophe losses in India in 2024 were driven by multiple cyclones and extreme monsoon patterns. While rainfall overall has been above average, the monsoon season in 2024 brought the highest number of “very heavy” and “extremely heavy” rainfall events of the past five years.
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Published on January 19, 2026
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