Mapfre is among the 10 main insurance companies in Europe, according to the 2017 edition of the annual ranking prepared by Mapfre's Economic Research and published recently by Fundación Mapfre. Last year, Mapfre was 11th place, behind the Dutch company Aegon.

AXA still leads the list with €92.05bn in premium volume in 2017, down by 2.3%. The 15 largest European insurance groups issued €579.6bn in premiums, up 0.8% on the previous year.

Two important events affected the performance of the business: low interest rates remain unchanged, which will continue to hinder the development of the life-savings business and traditional life annuities, as well as return on investment and the extreme catastrophic events in different regions that have impacted negatively on non-life income statements.

Aggregate operating results of the insurance groups included in the ranking dropped by 1.4% in 2017 to €51.3bn, greatly affected by higher than normal catastrophic losses.

In the Non-Life segment, the report from the Economic Research area shows a 1.7% increase in premiums for the 15 leading companies, to €255.4bn. Once again, the German company Allianz tops the ranking in the Non-Life segment, with premium volume of €52.26bn.