BCR Asigurari: We reviewed 2009 budget and adjusted growth to half

No company can have a firm policy for next year as not all the unknowns of the crisis have emerged, but 2009 will not be the toughest year for insurers, says Mihai Tecau, general manager of BCR Asigurari. BCR Asigurari, a major insurer, has revised the 2009 budget it had set in mid-2008, cutting the originally budgeted growth by half, on the future fallout of the financial crisis on the insurance market. "We initially had a normal budget, which we'd created in mid-year and which showed solid growth, by 30%. We've reviewed it now and we saw we couldn't grow by more than 10-15% at the most next year," stated Tecau. All the major insurers have revised their budgets at yearend as the crisis spread. "2009 is an unknown at the moment. I'm being taken by surprise every day by the information coming from the foreign markets and I believe we should be more realistic in all the plans we draw up for 2009," Tecau says. Still, he does not believe 2009 will be the toughest year for insurers as each year has been difficult so far despite companies registering growth. Insurers' turnovers are mainly hurt on the segment of comprehensive auto insurance and house insurance because of the dramatic slowdown of car leasing and mortgage lending. Could there be layoffs on the insurance market because of the crisis? "It's hard to tell," states Tecau.