Venezuelan insurers do not make money insuring: they make it in the treasury

The Venezuelan insurance sector loses money on its underwriting business. It loses it in all five periods measured, from 2021 to June 2026.

Even so, it closes every year with a profit. The profit does not come from insuring. It comes from the treasury.

Where it comes from

The finding comes from C4Accel’s own study. It sizes the Venezuelan insurance market with the regulator’s figures. Its cut-off date is June 2026.

The study rebuilds the series company by company, from 2021. The regulator publishes the sector’s result in a table. It separates the underwriting result from the financial one, and defines the latter as such.

Two limits are worth keeping in mind. The 2022 results table is missing. And the whole series is preliminary: the source states that it is unaudited.

The net underwriting result was −16.99% of premiums in 2021. In 2025 it was −9.43%. The loss does not grow steadily: it was worse at the start.

What does grow is the cushion. In 2021, the financial result covered the underwriting loss 1.29 times. In the first half of 2026 it covers it 2.87 times.

In that half, the result equals 9.2% of premiums. All of it comes from the treasury.

The sector is solvent despite everything. Its free equity covers the required margin between 1.58 and 1.78 times. But that solvency is funded by the financial result, not the underwriting one.

What the treasury is made of

The regulator publishes the financial result on a single line. It does not say whether it is interest, exchange gains or revaluation. The study infers it by dividing that line by the money that produces it.

In the fourth quarter of 2025, that money yielded between 31% and 34%. In the same quarter, the bolivar devalued 68%.

It is not interest: no bolivar instrument pays that in a quarter. Nor is it pure dollars, because it yields less than half the devaluation.

The study’s conclusion is that the result is predominantly from exchange gains. It comes from a portfolio that is only half indexed.

Which decision it changes

For a C-suite executive, the finding weighs differently depending on your position toward the sector.

If you sell to the sector. A proposal that improves the underwriting margin competes against the treasury. Today that treasury solves the problem with a growing cushion. Your argument needs more than margin.

If you are evaluating an acquisition or an alliance. If the bolivar stabilizes, past profitability stops repeating. In that scenario, the indexed half stops producing. The sector is left with the underwriting loss of the five periods measured.

It is a scenario from the study, not a dated projection. But it changes the price of any stake. The profit today’s statements show has an expiry date.

If you provide services to the sector. The treasury feeds on the time between collecting the premium and paying the claim. That time defines your working capital.

Among the ten largest, the term runs from 47 to 218 days. Neither solvency nor portfolio explains it. It is each company’s policy.

The study measures from the moment the insurer recognizes the debt. Billing and medical audit are left out. The term you live with is therefore longer.

Before negotiating with an insurer, it pays to know which side of that range it is on.

What else is behind it

The full study measures the market, its coverage and its gap with the region. This article touches only one of its findings. Behind it are, among other pieces:

• Why the sector’s most cited figure is half-yearly, not annual.
• The mandatory insurance that almost never pays a claim.
• Why the individual policy rules in money and the group policy rules in people.
• How much of the lag behind the region is poverty, and how much is not buying insurance.
• The market’s three ceilings, and the only one the sector can reach on its own.

Your place in the insurance chain tells you where to start.