50 new health insurance products launched since 2022

Ageing and longevity also mean chronic illness and non-self-sufficiency. The increasingly overburdened state struggles to provide adequate benefits and inevitably increases household expenditure (45.7 billion in 2024) and recourse to insurance solutions.

The need for health and care also drives the health insurance business. By now, insurance cover is a constant in employment contracts, allowing, through group policies, access, even for the chronically ill, at reduced costs. But the market for 'more expensive' individual policies is also awakening.

Thus, for some years now, health insurance has been registering significant growth rates: volumes have risen from around EUR 3.3 billion in 2021 to almost EUR 5.3 billion estimated for 2025, a growth of 60% in four years. "This increase can be attributed much more significantly to products of an individual nature (health policies purchased by individuals for their own and their household's needs) than to collective forms," explains Stefano Frazzoni, senior partner head of insurance wealth&asset management area at Prometeia. "The weight of the individual component has grown by 10 percentage points (from 32% in 2021 to 42% in 2024), with an increase in inflows of almost 90 per cent.

There are certainly several factors contributing to this trend, both on the demand side of citizens and on the supply side of insurance companies. "On the demand side, it is undeniable that, since Covid, awareness of health issues has grown steadily, as has the perception of the often inadequate response offered by the SSN, plastically represented by the phenomenon of waiting times," Frazzoni emphasises.

But what are the characteristics of the policies offered? "We have witnessed two important drivers of development: on the one hand, a widespread repricing of products (premium rises, ed. note), necessary both to compensate for the increase in the cost of healthcare services (which has been stronger than general inflation) and a general increase in the use of guarantees and therefore in the number of services requested on average by policyholders. But perhaps the most relevant element is represented by the commercial activation of the offer, especially in terms of new solutions proposed, both by traditional agency channels and - this is the most innovative element - also by bank distribution,' Frazzoni continues. 'Suffice it to say that, from 2022 to date, almost 50 new individual health insurance products have debuted on the market, accounting for just under half of all new non-motor insurance solutions launched in the period'.