Between 2000 and 2024 the world saw 965 insurers shutting shop majorly due to insolvencies according to a new research study released in July 2025.
The 55-page third edition of When, Where and How Often Insurers Fail: The Global Failed Insurer Catalogue – 2025 Update published by Property and Casualty Insurance Compensation Corporation (PACICC) reveals that insurer failures happen, often under different legal and regulatory frameworks.
On average, 36 insurers globally exit the market involuntarily each year due to solvency concerns or regulatory intervention. The report defined these exits as non-voluntary and the result of binding regulatory decisions.
The latest edition of the catalogue found that between 2000 and 2024, 965 insurance companies failed across 71 countries. Of these, 606 were non-life insurers, 324 were life insurers and 35 were composite insurers offering both types of coverage.
The study found that insurers failed on each of the continents around the globe, except Antarctica.
Some 555 global insurance failures ? more than half (57.5%) of all failures since 2000 ? have occurred in North America. Another 139 insurers (14.4%) failed in Europe. The remaining failures include: 96 insurers (9.9%) in Africa; 84 insurers (54 non-life and 30 life) (8.7%) in Asia; 87 insurers (9.0%) in South America; and 4 (0.4%) insurers in Oceania.
In Asia, the Philippines, Thailand, China, Korea and Japan markets saw the greatest number of closures of insurance companies during the period under review. The study revealed that there is evidence of large gaps in policyholder protection across continents.
Policyholders involved in 98.1% of failures in North America benefited from the additional layer of protection provided by a policyholder protection scheme (PPS) while policyholders were protected by a PPS in only 59.7% in European failures, and in 41.7% failures in Asia while in case of Africa it was just 7.3% of the total failures.