The insurance market is heading for $700 million this year and, should the H1 45% growth pace keep up, we may be looking at one billion dollars next year. The soaring numbers can be grounded on accelerated lending, leasing and the more expensive auto civil liability policies.
"The Romanian insurance market continues to grow, having posted 12,184 billion ROL in gross premiums in the first half of 2003, which accounts for a 45% increase as compared to the year-ago period," Nicolae Crisan, chairman of the Insurance Supervision Commission said yesterday. #leadend#The market had grown 40% in the first five months of 2003. The growth is actually 17% in euros and 45% in dollars (since the USD/ROL exchange rate has hardly budged).
The insurance market is thus slated to reach 700 million dollars this year, provided the growth trend maintains and the US dollar does not post a significant increase against the ROL. Gross premiums amounted to 498 million dollars last year and to $345 million in 2001.
The retail segment is behind this boom - life insurance, home insurance, credit and guarantee insurance, auto insurance and also insurance against financial losses. However, the 30% increase in the price of auto civil liability insurance and the "no discount" policy should also be credited for this trend.
In many cases, lending comes with life, home or car insurance. Moreover, insurers earned more from insurance against financial losses and for credit guarantees.
Lending made most of the difference, which can be clearly seen in the increase posted by Asiban, the insurer that works extensively with its shareholders - BRD (Romanian Development Bank), Banca Transilvania, CEC (Romanian Savings Bank), and BCR (Romanian Commercial Bank). Asiban doubled revenues in the first half of 2003, which propelled it from the tenth place among insurers in 2002 to the 8th position this year. The company has outpaced Generali and AIG Romania, the Romanian-based branches of very strong multinationals.
However, multinationals also posted the biggest growth: Unita (part of WienerStaedtische - Austria) and Allianz-tiriac (where Allianz Germany holds a 51% stake) saw gross premiums going up 76% and 54% respectively in euros in the first half.
Asirom posted a 0.7% increase in euros, with 3.6% growth logged by ING Nederlanden. Moderate increases in euros were also registered by Omniasig (14%) and Astra (16%), both failing to match the general 17% growth pace. On the other hand, Ardaf posted 25% bigger revenues in euros, mainly due to changes in the shareholding structure. The only drop was posted by Generali: -2.5%.
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