Bulgaria

Axco provides details on the life insurance sector including Bulgarian market participants, reinsurance and distribution channels. The reports describe classes of business from both individual and group life such as whole life, endowment, term life and unit-linked.
Information on non-life classes for example critical illness and private medical insurance.

The report describes the public and private healthcare system in Bulgaria, the scope of cover, accessibility financing and provides an analysis of how the public and private systems complement each other.

Axco reports on the three pillars of Bulgarian pension provision.

• State pension benefits including benefit calculations and eligibility criteria 
• Workplace pension provision; types of schemes calculations eligibility and; tax implications
• Voluntary individual pension provision, type of products and tax implications

The Bulgaria report provides an in-depth analysis of the regulatory framework governing social security as well as details on financing and eligibility. Information includes but is not limited to

• state pensions,
• permanent disability benefit
• occupational accident and disease
• maternity and paternity payments 

Bulgaria, in 2020, was ranked ninth out of the 27 Eastern European countries in terms of total market insurance premiums, with premium growth in 2018 and 2019 driven by a particular market issue in motor third party liability (MTPL) rather than economic growth or a wider acceptance of the need or benefits of insurance. There has been steady growth in GDP over the last five years, excluding 2020, being impacted by COVID-19, and insurance penetration has shown improvement to 2.43%, in 2019 and 2020 its highest recorded level. Market participants continue trying to grow awareness of the benefits of insurance but note the cultural expectation of the population to expect the state to step in where events cause hardship; governments have done little to rebut ....

Bulgaria has a three-pillar pension system: pillar I- the state pension insurance; pillar II- supplementary pension insurance which is administered through a universal pension fund and an occupational pension fund (as chosen by the employee); pillar III- voluntary pension insurance.

On 28 July 2015 parliament passed amendments to the Social Insurance Code (SII); the key changes relating to pensions, effective 1 January 2016, are: the status of pillar II was changed from mandatory to voluntary ; workers born after 1959 are allowed to ....

Bulgaria continues to face the challenges of having poor general healthcare indicators: it has high infant mortality rates, low life expectancy plus there is a high incidence of cardiovascular disease, strokes and cancers.

The healthcare services sector in Bulgaria is ill-equipped to combat these challenges and continues to be one of the poorest in Europe. Employee benefit providers continue to see private medical cover as the most sought after benefit by employees in response to the poor state of the public health system: in 2018 and 2019 it was the strongest growing sector of the insurance market and although statistics show some premium shrinkage in 2020, this is more ....