The first nine months of the year were a really difficult time for insurance companies, with many top ten players seeing their market shares go down compared with the same time of last year.
The top ten companies in general insurance, which accounts for 80% of the total insurance market, saw their underwritten premiums in euros go down by as much as 19.2% or up by as much as 129.5%.
The worst decline was reported by BCR Asigurari, because the company dropped its credit insurance business that accounted for quite a lot in the total. During the same period, Ardaf saw the fastest growth, because of its increase on the auto liability insurance segment where it operates some of the lowest rates.
The competition between the top two players, Allianz-Tiriac and Omniasig became even tighter, because the market share difference between the two narrowed greatly. Whereas in the first nine months of last year the difference stood at 5.4%, at the end of September it was down nine times, to 0.6%. Allianz-Tiriac ended the first nine months with 261 million-euro business from general insurance and Omniasig with 252.5 million euros, with only 8.8 million euros setting the two companies apart.
The insurers' growth calculated in euros also slowed down because of the depreciation of the RON against the European currency.
The top ten general insurance companies that posted declines of their market share compared with the first nine months of 2007 are Allianz-Tiriac (-2.1%), Asirom (-0.2%), BCR Asigurari (-3.0%), Unita (-0.6%), Asiban (-1.2%) and Generali (-0.8%). This means that six of the ten companies had their market share go down in the first nine months. Those whose market share went up are Omniasig (2.7%), Astra (2.7%) and Ardaf (2.7%).
The insurers that managed to climb several positions in the ranking are Astra and Ardaf, from seventh to fourth and from tenth to eighth.
The general insurance market went up by some 14% in the first nine months to a total of 1.47 billion euros, with the top ten companies accounting for almost 90% of it.
On the market of life insurance, the number of players that saw their market shares decline was even higher in the first nine months. Seven of the top ten companies, which account for more than 97% of the market posted declines of their market shares by 3.5% to 0.2%. These companies are ING Asigurari, Grawe, Allianz-Tiriac, Asiban, Aviva, Asirom and Omniasig Life.
The insurers whose market share increased were AIG Life (2.5%), BCR Asigurari de Viata (3.2%) and Generali (0.7%).
The market leader, which saw 15% growth in euros in the first nine months to 361.4 million euros, was again ING Asigurari, with 113.7 million euros, followed by AIG Life with 60.4 million euros in underwritten premiums.
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