Insurers launch new products
Lots of people asked for this type of insurance, which is evidence that the middle-class segment has already taken shape in Romania. On the other hand, because the interest rates for financial instruments have decreased, the only possibility to obtain profits higher than the inflation rate is to place the amounts on the internal capital market and, after 2007, on the European capital market.
The Romanian insurance company Generali Asigurari said that in the first three months of 2006 it subscribed insurance premiums worth 66.88 million lei (19 million Euro), life insurance policies having a 14.05 per cent quota of this value.
Non-life insurance policies reached 57.48 million lei (around 16.4 million Euro), up by 190 per cent compared to the similar period in 2005, while life insurance policies grew by 133 per cent, to 9.39 million lei (around 2.7 million Euro).
The start of the year was very good for Generali and by the end of June the revenues from non-life insurances will reach the level of underwritten premiums for 2005, when they totaled around 110 million lei. For the life insurance segment, the company anticipates revenues of 36 million lei, compared to 20.7 milion lei recorded in 2005.
Also last week, Interamerican launched the CASCO Light car insurance policy, a product, the company said, positioned between the compulsory car insurance (RCA) and the optional comprehensive car insurance (CASCO). They consider that the car insurance market has an accelerated growth in Romania, and, implicitly, a huge potential, that is why they have chosen to invest in developing this product. On the international markets, CASCO Light is a product which is over 20 years old. In Romania, it is an innovative product, which meets the market demand.
The company officials also announced that in the first quarter of 2006 its life insurance underwritten premiums went up by 38 per cent, compared to the same period last year, reaching a total volume of around seven million lei.
On the unit-linked segment, Interamerican recorded an increase by 198 per cent, also compared to the first quarter of last year, the value of premiums standing at 777,680 lei. On the non-life insurance segment, the company reported that the total volume of gross underwritten premiums exceeded nine million lei. In total, the value of underwritten premiums stood at 16.64 million lei.
Interamerican is part of the Eureko group, which posted a turnover of over six million Euro last year.