Market with considerable room for expansion

The life insurance market in Slovenia continues to be dominated by the quasi-privatised former state company, Triglav, which in 2007 had a market share of 43.6%. (The company was privatised in September 2008 when its shares were listed on the Ljubljana stock exchange.) But although Triglav still leads the market in terms of product innovation, it has been losing market share to three other companies, Maribor and KD Life and the foreign insurer, NLB Vita. But despite the rapid growth of the market in recent years (the market expanded by 21.0% in 2007 and by 8.2% during the first half of 2008) life penetration and density remain relatively low. This is the result of a number of factors including that until recently life insurance was not sold aggressively (this may reflect the absence of foreign companies such as ING which have revolutionised life sales techniques in other central European countries) and, because of the perception that Slovenians are a naturally conservative people, unit-linked policies were not introduced fully until 2003. In 2005 there were 809,651 savings policies in force, equivalent to roughly one policy for every two people between the ages of 15 and 59. Insurers are therefore confident that the market has considerable room for expansion