Investment programmes in euros or dollars offered by the life insurance companies turned out to be the wrong choice this year, or at least in the first six months of the year. Given the high interest rates offered by banks and the surging stock prices on the Bucharest Stock Exchange, the ROL investment programmes were much more profitable than those in foreign currency, which even logged decreases.
The three insurance companies that provide unit-linked life insurance policies - ING Nederlanden, Aviva and Allianz-Tiriac are now managing funds worth 70-80 million euros on behalf of their several hundred thousand clients.
These unit-linked programmes provide for "separate" investments in fund units or investment programmes that have the same fluctuations as the mutual fund units. The unit-linked component, which is being used for long-term investments, can be sold or supplemented at any time by the holder, with certain limitations in place. On the other hand, the owners of such policies are the sole risk bearers. Thus, during the insured period, in the event the insured event actually occurs, the company pays the maximum level between the insured amount and the holder's account where the investment accumulates, but, in the end, the holder only gets the account. In other words, should the fund units drop, as it has happened in the case of certain investment programmes in the first six months of 2004, the policy owner gets less than he had actually invested. Hence, the importance attached to the investment's currency, but also to the type of investment.
Following some very aggressive campaigns for this type of life insurance and the bad reputation surrounding the "classical" mutual funds since the SAFI and FNI scandals, life insurers have earned the top spot among the recipients of the people's savings.
By comparison, all of the mutual funds operating on the Romanian market have total assets amounting to 2,300 billion ROL (56 million euros), whereas the Mixt and Bonuri de tezaur funds alone, managed by ING Nederlanden, total assets worth 1,277 billion ROL (55 million euros).
The best H1 yield was provided by the Mixt investment programme of ING Nederlanden, whose portfolio is 25% made up of capital market stock, such as Banca Transilvania, BRD (Romanian Development Bank) and SNP (National Oil Company) Petrom. All of these stocks follow the BET index, which went up 41% in the first half of the year.
As the other companies displayed little if any interest in stock investments, this has led to poorer results for the ROL investment programmes, which, nevertheless, outpaced the foreign currency investments: ROL Practic (Aviva) and Leu - Plus, Leu - Extra (Allianz-Tiriac) posted yields of 7.6%-7.7% in the first six months of 2004.
Among the foreign currency investment programmes, Progresiv and Dinamic (both in euros) from Allianz-Tiriac posted the best results: 6.3% and 5.14%, respectively.
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