Marsh: Insurers settle claims of hundreds of thousands of euros more often

The frequency of claims settled by insurers involving six or even seven-digit sums has risen in the past two years, which such claims being usually registered for real estate insurance policies or professional liability insurance, says Cristian Fugaciu, general manager of Marsh, one of the biggest brokers on the domestic market, specialised in corporate clients.
"The claim increase started being felt as early as 2008. The biggest claim settled this year for a Marsh brokered policy went beyond one million euros and was settled for a banking sector fraud case. We registered two claims of above 1m euros in 2010, but there were several payments of hundreds of thousands of euros each," Fugaciu stated.
Marsh head expects the insurance market to end this year in line with the pace of the first nine months, when a decline of above 5% in gross underwritten premiums was registered, to 6.3bn RON (1.5bn euros).
In 2011, he expects the market to stall or post a single digit increase at the highest. Marsh expects to end this year with around 5% higher turnover from 2009, when it handled gross premiums worth 200m RON (48m euros). For 2011, the broker forecasts flat turnover from 2010.