Panama

Axco provides details on the life insurance sector including Panamanian 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 Panama, 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 Panama's 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 Panama 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 

The Panamanian insurance market in 2020 ranked 61 worldwide in Axco Global Statistics for all classes' premiums. It was at 60 for life business, in terms of other Latin American countries between Ecuador (57) and Guatemala (69). The local market remains predominantly non-life, despite better recent growth rates for the life sector, which represented 26.4% of total market income in 2020.

Group business in 2020 represented some 59% of total life premiums of PAB ....

While the social security scheme (CSS) encompassed over 3.25 million people in 2019, amounting to over three-quarters of the population between active contributors, their dependants and its pensioners, the private pensions market is very small. There were some 65,000 people engaged in saving at the end of 2020, a reduction of 2.6% on the previous year. The total investments under management were PAB/USD 642.9mn, of which almost two-thirds were in instruments of financial institutions ....

The public health system struggles to function efficiently: there are concerns about the quality of services provided. A growing number of users find the demand for treatment regularly exceeds availability. The ageing population and increased life expectancy are likely to exacerbate the challenges faced by health services providers already under pressure ....