Between 2008 and 2017, the Croatian insurance market saw an 8% decrease in business, in GWP terms. From an absolute value of EUR 1.32 billion recorded in 2008, GWP at the overall market level gradually decreased year by year, until 2015, when the market started to grow again. The positive trend seen in 2016 and 2017 was not strong enough to bring the market at the pre-crisis level.

By analyzing the graph of total indemnities paid in the overall market, we saw a fluctuating movement of the overall indemnities between EUR 0.56 billion - EUR 0.63 billion values, caused by the opposing, mirrored trends of life and non-life indemnities. In the last year though we have an exception from this "battle", caused by an alignment of both trends in the same upward direction, making the last year (2017) have the greatest recorded value of total indemnities payed, counting EUR 680.6 million and 8.6% growth from the reference year (2008).

The life sector grew by the end of this 10-year cycle, both in premiums and indemnities. The gross written life premiums grew overall by 12.6%, while the payed life indemnities almost tripled. If we talk in absolute terms, the premiums grew by the end with EUR 43.7 million, while the indemnities added an extra EUR 179.9 million from 2008 to 2017.Yet, it is worth noting that the life insurance balance has maintained year by year a good positive margin.

The non-life sector was less flourishing than the life sector in the past years. The total non-life market dropped, both in written premiums by -16.4% (EUR 160.1 million) and paid indemnities by -23.7% (EUR 126.3 million). The main business lines of non-life insurance, property and motor, maintained a profitable margin during this period, but the progressive downwards trend allowed the slow replacement of non-life business with life policies. The MTPL insurance kept a steady share of 30-33% from non-life between 2008 - 2013, dropping then vertiginously in the following 4 years and reaching about 22.6% share in non-life market, pushed down by a highly competitive market conduct born by the MTPL tariffs liberalization. Paid indemnities for MTPL decreased with -33.5% and the MTPL premiums decreased by 31.7%. The other main motor class, motor hull insurance, recorded a decrease of around -25% both in premiums and indemnities.

Over the 10 years that we studied, the life insurance business' market share grew by 6.2 percentage points, from a share of 26.3% in total market (in 2008) to 32.5% share (in 2017). An even bigger difference was seen in the share of life indemnities, occupying 14.9% (85.1% for non-life indemnities) in 2008, growing from year to year, reaching a share of 40.1% (58.9% for non-life indemnities) in the last year.