3. Results
3.1. An overview of insurance companies
In the first part of the questionnaire, seven questions were designed to gain an overview of the health insurance companies operating in Saudi Arabia. Citing reasons of confidentiality, two of the surveyed companies did not respond to the first part. Thus, a total of 14 companies answered the first part of the questionnaire.
The first question pertained to the core insurance business of the companies. Seven of the 14 companies confirmed that health insurance is their core business. The companies were then asked to enumerate their staff numbers in 2009. Nine companies had more than 100 employees and the TPA company, which managed seven health insurance companies, had more than 100 employees. After that, the percentage of the company’s business of health insurance showed that 77% of the companies fall between 20% and 60%. Table 1 shows the percentage of health insurance and the number of companies that fall in this range.