Cameroon

Axco provides details on the life insurance sector including Cameroon 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 Cameroon, 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 Cameroon 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 Cameroon 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 

Cameroon fell behind Ivory Coast and Senegal to become the third largest life market in the CIMA zone in 2019 (although it is still the second largest non-life market). Provisional figures from the insurers' association (Association des Societes d'Assurances du Cameroun - ASAC) indicate that the life market grew by 2.49% in 2020 despite the COVID-19 pandemic. The increase, however, is believed to be due to one large contract (savings) being underwritten with the National Social Security Fund (Caisse Nationale de Prevoyance Sociale - CNPS).

The overall insurance penetration rate is still low reflecting the poverty and lack of awareness of the benefits of insurance.

Although Cameroon offers a state pension under its social security system, only 10% of the population are said to benefit from it, 7% in the public and 3% in the private sector. This reflects the fact that around 90% of the workforce are employed in the informal sector where compulsory contributions are not made into the national social security fund (although voluntary contributions are now possible and the government talks about its objective of extending coverage to the informal sector in its national development strategy).

Even in the private sector not all employers make the necessary contributions ....

Personal accident (PA) and healthcare (of which healthcare is the vast proportion) remains a key class of business, generating premiums of XAF 38.00bn (USD 69.21mn) in 2019 which was only a 0.05% increase over 2018. As most of the business is group the slowdown is probably linked to harsher economic conditions.

The loss ratio on PA and healthcare business continues to be relatively high at 72.73% in 2019, driven by low premiums, high costs of care providers and some  ....