Hungarian insurers earn the highest return on equity in the region, 24%, Croatian insurers about 7%

Return on equity is net profit over average shareholders' equity, as each insurer reports them. On the Solvency II markets where the insurers that publish both figures write at least 85% of premium in 2025, Hungary leads with 24.4%, ahead of Czechia with 22.0% and Romania with 20.1%. Poland (19.2%) and Slovenia (11.9%) sit in the middle; Croatia is lowest at 7.1%.

Poland's return rose from 10.4% in 2021 and 13.3% in 2022 to between 16% and 20% from 2023, as profits grew faster than capital. Slovenia's fell to 3.8% in 2023, the year of the storms and floods, and was back at 12.5% in 2024. Croatia's has stayed between 5.8% and 7.6% in all five years.

The figures add up company accounts. A dividend a subsidiary pays its parent in the same market is counted once, in the subsidiary's profit (in Poland, PZU Życie's €447m to PZU in 2025), and a Baltic company counts in each country with that country's share of its premium. The accounts mix local standards with IFRS, which changed with IFRS 17 in 2023. Slovakia, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia are left out of the comparison: too few of their insurers' reports state both net profit and equity. Markets outside Solvency II are not compared either, as their insurers report on local accounting.

Corrected on 7 November 2026: the return now counts that dividend once, as the market's net profit already did. Before, Poland's 2025 return was given as 22.8% and the title named Hungarian, Polish and Czech insurers as earning over 20%.