After having run Interamerican insurance company for three years, Timo van Voorden is going back to the Netherlands, with his position to be taken over by Frans van der Ent, the current manager of the private pension unit of Eureko group domestically.
"There were several years full of intense activity," this is how van Voorden starts his story. The Dutchman, aged 38, was appointed CEO of Interamerican Romania in November 2004 by the majority shareholder in Eureko, a financial group based in Utrecht, the Netherlands, with annual revenues worth over 14bn euros. Van Voorden was in charge of both the insurance company and the Medisystem clinics unit and Euroclinic private hospital, namely with investments worth tens of million euros.
"When I was appointed as CEO, Euroclinic was just a project and I had to make some changes to make it work. The opening of the hospital was a highly complex process," says the Dutchman.
On an almost inexistent health insurance market, van Voorden took his chance and in May 2005 opened one of the biggest private hospitals of Romania, with total construction costs topping 14m euros. Now, the hospital generates annual turnover of almost 5m euros, and the number of patients went beyond 10,000. The same year, the company run by van Voorden launched private health insurance, which the Dutchman considers as one of his biggest achievements during the period he worked with Interamerican.
Other million euros in investments van Voorden coordinated were those destined to the Medisystem private clinic network, which, besides the hospital, provides health services both to people holding an Interamerican health insurance policy and to those who do not have such policies. Van Voorden replaced Interamerican's management team during the very first months he worked with the company.
In the several years van Voorden ran it, Interamerican's turnover rose by some 36%, from 11m euros in 2004 to 15m euros in late 2006.
"I do not know what I did wrong to be sent back home," jokes van Voorden, who will coordinate the brokerage unit of Eureko group back in the Netherlands. It annually handles insurance contracts worth 4.5bn euros, three times more than the level of the Romanian insurance market in late 2006.
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