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Dublin - Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/c0810e/hungary_insurance) has announced the addition of the "Hungary Insurance Report Q1 2009" report to their offering.

Our Hungary Insurance Report provides independent forecasts and competitive intelligence on Hungary's insurance industry.

Hungarian industrial production data for November showed the fourth consecutive month of contraction, with output falling by a whopping 12.2% (10.1% when adjusted for calendar effects) year-on-year (y-oy).

This is yet another leading indicator of the Hungarian economy's rapid deterioration. On the back of this release, and given our downgrade of our 2009 Eurozone GDP growth forecast to -1.6%, we have revised down our Hungarian 2009 growth forecast. We now anticipate a deep recession, with GDP growth of -3.4% replacing our previous moderate recession forecast of -0.8%. Moreover, we expect growth to remain weighed down beyond 2009, and forecast GDP growth of only 0.1% in 2010, down from the 2.6% that we previously anticipated.

A key factor negatively impacting the Hungarian economy in 2009 will be the recession in all key external trading partners. Germany entered technical recession in Q308, and we believe that the entire Eurozone will follow suit in 2009. Moreover, we expect the UK economy to shrink by 3.5% in 2009 and Russia to contract as well in H109. This in turn will severely impact demand for Hungarian exports, which we expect to contract by 4.5% in 2009, from a previous expectation of 0.5% growth. The industrial production data already reflects the effects of the external slowdown. Hungarian industry is heavily geared towards manufacturing export goods, and the weakness of demand in the Eurozone is forcing such firms to rein in production. We forecast industrial output growth to average -5.0% over 2009, which will be indicative of the weakness of export demand.

Moreover, while we had previously forecast export growth to recover reasonably robustly beyond 2009 - to 7.3% in 2010 - we now see the global recession lasting throughout the next two years. This is likely to hinder Hungarian exporters throughout 2010, and have slashed our export growth forecast to 1.0% accordingly. Since the last quarter, we have made two major changes to the data in this report. First, we have - to the greatest extent possible - incorporated hard figures that have been made available by the regulator(s) and trade association(s) in each country. In some cases, therefore, we have begun to include numbers that pertain to the development of the insurance sector through the early stages of the global financial crisis.


Second, we have extended our forecasts out to 2013. In all cases, we have reviewed the key growth drivers - non-life penetration and life density - incorporated in our forecasts. The global financial crisis is likely to affect the various segments of the global insurance industry in different ways. In many countries, especially in Europe, the coming recession points to softness in the non-life segment. In many cases, numbers of policies may fall and there should be downwards pressure on premiums. By contrast, the main problem for the life segment in almost every country is the extreme volatility of financial markets. Over the longer term however, the fortunes of life insurance will likely recover thanks to the secular growth of organised savings in most countries. China - where the larger insurance companies continue to achieve double digit growth in premium income - is a good example of this. Some particular niches should also do well in the current environment, such as legal liability insurance.

In Central and Eastern Europe, we profile 22 multi-national insurance companies. In alphabetical order, these are AEGON, AIG, Allianz, Aviva, AXA, Cardif, ERGO, Eureko, Fortis, Generali, GRAWE, Groupama, HDI-Gerling, HSBC Insurance, ING, MetLife, Prudential Financial, QBE, RSA, UNIQA, Vienna Insurance Group and Zurich Financial Services.

We also discuss the regional presence of Belgium's KBC and Austria's Erste Bank through a number of insurance subsidiaries and explain the importance, for each of the various countries, of purely domestic firms.

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/c0810e/hungary_insurance

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