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MarketCorroboratedSaudi Arabia
Saudi insurers' Q1 profit climbs 27%, but three names take almost all of it
Combined net profit at Saudi Arabia's 24 listed insurers rose 27% year on year in the first quarter to SAR809m, with medical cover supplying close to two-thirds of revenue and health profit jumping 46%. The notable feature is concentration: Tawuniya, Bupa Arabia and Al Rajhi booked SAR789m of that total, leaving the other 21 with roughly SAR20m between them, which keeps the pressure on smaller players to consolidate or find a niche.
People movesConfirmedUAE
Price Forbes builds out a Dubai facultative team with two Gallagher Re hires
Price Forbes has appointed Tarek Semaan as head of facultative for the Middle East and Africa and Anthony Abi Fadel as facultative director, both arriving from Gallagher Re, to grow its reinsurance book out of Dubai. The hires track the DIFC's pull as a regional hub, where insurance-related gross written premiums reached USD3.5bn in 2024, up around 35% on the year.
CompanyConfirmedQatar
Qatar Development Bank and Italy's SACE sign a Sharia-compliant reinsurance pact
Qatar Development Bank and SACE, Italy's export credit agency, have signed a framework for export-credit reinsurance to support Qatari and Italian exporters on third-country projects. SACE describes it as its first fully Sharia-compliant reinsurance arrangement, a useful precedent for fitting Islamic-finance structures inside conventional credit cover.
RegulationConfirmedOman
Oman updates the GCC-wide insurance protection scheme for Gulf nationals
Sultan Haitham has issued Royal Decree 65/2026 amending Oman's adoption of the unified system that extends social-insurance protection to GCC nationals working in another member state. This is housekeeping to a cross-border benefits scheme rather than a commercial-market measure, but it reflects continued tidying of the Gulf's portable-benefits framework.
Each item is a short editorial summary with a link to the original source. Items marked Rumour · unverified are unconfirmed and should be treated with caution. Compiled automatically; corrections welcome.