Monday, On the Margin
Insurance; pension funds; e-commerce; SOCAPs; GDP; manufacturing and IMMEX; retail & wholesale trade; services; border crossings.
Insurance
Insurance companies reported a 15% year-over-year increase in total premiums during 2024, closing the year with over $927 billion pesos in written premiums.
The industry’s top five companies—GNP, MetLife, BBVA, Quálitas, and AXA—captured close to 45% of the market, and with the exception of MetLife, they all recorded double-digit growth rates.
At the end of this email you can find in-depth figures for the main insurance markets: auto, life, and medical insurance.
Pension funds
Afores began 2025 with over $7 trillion pesos in net assets—17% higher than in January 2024.
Market leader Afore XXI grew its assets by 14% year over year but continues to lose ground to Profuturo, which closed January with a 21% increase in net assets. Other big players such as Sura and Pension ISSSTE also stood out, each posting net asset growth of around 20% over the past year.
If you’re interested in learning how pension funds make money, we did an introduction to this a while back.
E-commerce
According to CONDUSEF, successful e-commerce transactions exceeded 1.3 billion in 2024, marking a 27% increase from 2023. This surge in online purchasing totaled over $1 trillion pesos in volume.
A comparison with Banxico’s card transaction data suggests that nearly 14% of all credit and debit card transactions in Mexico took place online in 2024—3 percentage points higher than in 2019.
SOCAPs
Mexican cooperatives (cajas de ahorro) continued to grow in 2024. By the end of the fourth quarter, the loan portfolio of 154 SOCAPs operating in the country reached $164.7 billion pesos, marking an 11.4% year-over-year (YoY) increase — mirroring the 11.1% growth rate recorded in the same period of 2023.
Notably, Caja Popular Mexicana (CPM) — which accounts for more than a third of the sector’s total portfolio, saw its balance rise by nearly 14% YoY.
We did a deep dive on CPM a couple of months ago. The institution based in Guanajuato has the 10th largest consumer loan portfolio across all financial institutions in the country, as well as one of the lowest default rates. Plus, it made over $1.9 billion pesos in net profits during 2024.
GDP
The 2024 GDP figure came in better than expected. According to seasonally adjusted data, GDP declined by 0.6% quarter over quarter in the fourth quarter but still managed a modest 0.5% year-over-year increase in real terms.
As a result, the country’s full-year growth reached 1.2%, 0.2 percentage points above experts’ forecasts.1
This positive annual performance was mainly driven by a 2.1% expansion in the services sector and a slight 0.1% uptick in industrial and commercial activities, which helped offset a 2.1% contraction in the agricultural industry.
The 2024 growth rate is the lowest since 2013, excluding the contractions of 2019 and 2020.
Manufacturing and IMMEX
Manufacturing production slowed at the end of 2024, with a 1.5% month-over-month decline in production volumes during December and a 0.2% year-over-year growth, according to seasonally adjusted figures.
This modest annual growth was mainly due to a more than 5% decline in production levels across major subsectors such as transportation equipment, the food industry, and computer equipment manufacturing.
Export manufacturing, however, continued to expand. The 5,000+ companies participating in the IMMEX program reported a 5.8% annual revenue increase—topping $7 trillion pesos in 2024 and setting a historic high.
The IMMEX program is designed for companies that produce goods or provide services for export markets. It enables participating companies to temporarily import goods, raw materials, components, machinery, and equipment needed to produce export goods without incurring certain taxes and duties.
Retail & wholesale trade
Wholesale and retail trade companies in Mexico reported annual declines of 4.4% and 0.6%, respectively, in price-adjusted revenues during December. Wholesale trade recorded annual revenue declines throughout 2024, while retail trade saw seven consecutive months of decreases.
Despite this, retail trade revenues remain near record highs on a 12-month rolling basis. The recent contraction has been primarily driven by a high comparable base.
Services
On the other hand, 2024 proved more favorable for Mexico’s services sector. Revenues for non-financial services rose 2.5% year-over-year in December, based on price- and seasonally-adjusted data, extending the industry’s steady recovery since 2022.
The primary drivers of this 2024 recovery were transportation and professional services, both ending the year with annual gains surpassing 9%.
In spite of the solid recovery in recent months, revenue for the services sector remains slightly below pre-pandemic levels.
Border crossings
In 2024, more than 7.6 million trucks crossed from Mexico into the United States, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS).
The number of truck crossings rose by 3.5% compared to 2023, setting a new record high. More than half of these crossings last year originated from ports connecting Tamaulipas and Texas.
Auto, life and medical insurance
Here are the rankings for each of the major insurance companies at the end of 2024.
According to the Banxico’s expectations survey.