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Life insurances represent an important safety measure against financial results of various mishaps. They also supplement the public insurance system. Bearing in mind that the insurance market depends on the supply of risks by the policyholders, demand on these risks and readiness to accept them on the insurers’ side as well as funds at the disposal of both parties, the economic standing of a given country plays an important role. The macroeconomic situation of the Visegrad countries (V4) has been shaped in the last decade by events on the global financial markets and processes taking place in the European Union. The resulting changes concern both the general state of the economy and its particular sectors, including the life insurance sector. The study has been carried out on the basis of selected macroeconomic data and data reflecting the development of the life insurance sector in the years 2007–2015. Apart from the comparative analysis, a linear correlation technique, which describes the force and direction of relations between the properties, has been used. The studies have confirmed the assumed research hypotheses. Strong relationships between the level of property insurance sector development and the macroeconomic situation in the Visegrad countries have been found, along with mutual similarities and the high level of financial stability.

The article analyses the state of development and growth dynamics of insurance markets in selected European countries through applying four statistical indicators: share of insurance premium in the global insurance market premium, share of insurance premium per capita, share of insurance premium in GDP and share of life insurance premium in the entire insurance premium amount.A strategic developmental objective of the European financial services market is to guarantee a high degree of integration of insurance markets of particular countries within the European financial community and to adapt those insurance markets to the requirements of the Solvency II Directive.The applied analysis of insurance market concentrations in European countries helped divide them into three clusters that differ from one another. The first cluster includes countries with a large share of insurance premiums in the global market and a large share of insurance premiums in GDP. The second cluster groups together countries with a high level of insurance premiums per capita and a high share of life insurance premiums in the total amount of insurance premiums. The third one encompasses countries with the lowest values of analysed indicators, i.e. those that exhibit a low development level of insurance market, where property insurance prevails.The years 2011–2016 basically saw no changes in the structure of those clusters, although it was observed that even small fluctuations of indicator values may lead to a change in a certain insurance market position in a given cluster.The calculated average indicators of insurance market development dynamics have revealed a high degree of heterogeneity of analysed countries as regards the level of development of their insurance markets and their structure. The Polish insurance market has qualified to the third cluster and, as such, approximates average cluster values in terms of its development, while its development dynamics is decreasing.