Bradesco reduces insurance premium growth forecast

Bradesco Seguros, the insurance arm of Brazil's Banco Bradesco, reduced its full-year forecast for how much written premiums are expected to increase in 2018.

Bradesco Seguros now sees its premiums written expanding between 2% and 6% compared with a previous forecast of between 4% and 8%. "The Brazilian insurance market is still suffering the impacts of the challenging economic scenario," said Vinicius Albernaz, president of Bradesco Seguros, during a Q2 results press conference.

"[Brazil's] GDP growth for 2018 has been revised down to 1.8% because of tighter global conditions and the recent truckers strike. The uncertain outcome of the 2018 general elections may further weigh down on growth," said the IMF earlier this week in a report with updated growth forecasts for Brazil and other countries Latin America and the Caribbean.

In April, IMF had forecast that Latin America's largest economy would expand at 2.3%.

In the second quarter, the company's written premiums totaled 18.2bn reais (US$4.85bn), down 1.6% from the year ago period.

The quarter's net profit jumped to 1.58bn reais from 938mn reais in 2Q17 and it was mainly driven by a reduction of technical provisions (down 10% to 7.15bn reais).

Looking ahead, Bradesco Seguro plans to launch new products and expands its digital footprint.

"We know that the insurance market is undergoing major transformations, from the demographic profile of the population to the introduction of new technologies. We are working hard to develop new products and also want to increase our scale to continue to have strong presence in all segments," said Albernaz.