why does my insurer want to know how much assets my business has

Equity is an indicator of financial capacity and continuity

An insurer asks about the company's equity because it says something about financial capacity: can the company bear a deductible, survive a claim, or continue premium payments in case of difficulties. This is separate from the question of whether the company is insurable; it is part of the risk assessment the insurer makes about the customer, not about the insured object. For credit insurance and commercial liability policies with high limits, this weighs more heavily than for a standard package.

The answer the insurer is looking for usually corresponds to the equity as shown in the annual accounts: the difference between assets and liabilities. If the company has not filed this, or if filing is behind schedule, the answer is often not available from a single source and you must fall back on internal figures. Therefore, first check whether the annual accounts of the company have been filed, because that determines which figure you can provide and whether it is publicly verifiable for the insurer. Equity is sometimes confused with financial health in a broader sense — the latter also includes liquidity and profitability, and is a broader requested point that is dealt with separately in the question about financial health.

No legal obligation for this specific answer

The three sources relevant to this platform — the Trade Register Act 2007, the Act on the prevention of money laundering and financing of terrorism, and the CSRD Directive — none of them require sharing an equity figure with an insurer. The Trade Register Act establishes which basic company data are public, but equity itself is not automatically included in the trade register; that follows from the annual accounts, which are filed separately. The question about equity with an insurer is therefore a contractual question in the context of risk acceptance, not a legal obligation under these regulations. Compare this with the question about the source of funds, which does come from customer due diligence under the AML/CFT Act — these two questions look similar but have a different basis, as explained in the source of funds.