I will then give our assessment of how the insurance sector is doing in Ireland before concluding with some current areas of focus and re ections on longer term trends. Insurance and the economy Insurance enhances the ef ciency and growth of the economy. It allows businesses to transfer risk, which facilitates funding. The sector pools and smoothens aggregate risks.
Moreover, the dissemination of information on the price of risk should lead to more ef cient resource allocation.2 The sector also plays an important role in channelling household savings into nancial markets and the real economy. This happens on an international scale. Irish insurers wrote over € of gross premiums in 2021, more than two-thirds of which was written ‘cross border’.