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The country’s insurance sector is open and liberalised and, as with Ghana’s other major financial service sectors, has benefitted extensively from foreign investment. Since the 1990s, capital and expertise have entered the insurance market and helped in the development of the sector. As of early 2014, more than half of the insurance companies in Ghana were foreign...

US and European players have historically dominated the global reinsurance segment, and Africa – where other than a handful of small, government-backed reinsurers benefiting from mandated local coverage requirements, reinsurance contracts have generally gone abroad – is no exception. However, this is beginning to change, as the high growth in Africa’s emerging markets,...

To date, Ghana has followed a traditional course in the development and sale of insurance products: companies design and underwrite policies and brokers and agents are used to distributed them. As a result, penetration rates are relatively low.

The insurance sector is growing rapidly as result of reforms, improved regulation and a better understanding of the relevant products on the part of Ghana’s consumers, and the market has been a star performer. Total premiums rose 23% in 2013 over 2012, and the five-year average growth for the sector was 32%, according to the insurance commissioner as quoted in the local...

As in many emerging markets, small companies, start-ups and entrepreneurs have a difficult time raising funds in Ghana, particularly given the high interest rates for commercial loans. The stock market – where listing can be challenging for a smaller firm and where trading is minimal – is also not currently a practical avenue for early-stage funding. The main board is...

Integration in West Africa has come in fits and starts, and with varying levels of success. With two large economic blocs – including the 16-member ECOWAS grouping and the smaller subset of Francophone members, the 8-member West African Economic and Monetary Union (Union Economique et Monétaire Ouest Africaine, UEMOA) – West Africa has a variety of agreements in place...