The European life insurance industry development perspectives seem
to be tenebrous in the next period, mainly because of the global financial
crisis. This fact
has determined the clients' lack of trust into the financial institutions
and has generated many problems in the insurance industry. This is one of
the conclusion of the "World views for life insurance in Eastern Europe,
CIS and Asia" Conference, organized by RUSSIAN Polis in Warsaw and where
PRIMM - Insurance & Pensions Magazine was Media Partner.
"The life insurance tendencies that we see for the next period are negative.
We can expect a growth rhythm slowing for all the industry and the disappearance
of some market players", Olga RUF-FIEDLER, Life Insurance Specialist and ex-CEO,
ING Russia&CIS, has stated. "We can also anticipate an unit-link policies
popularity decrease, because of their investment component and the weak results
registered by the funds this year. Regarding the bancassurance collaboration,
we expect a lane from the life credit products to guarantee saving products".
According to Olga RUF-FIEDLER, the biggest industry challenge in the next period
will be regaining the clients' financial institutions trust.
"The financial crisis led to smashing some exposures in insurance, like: "we
are an international group, we are professionals, we are the ones you can trust".
Consequently, the client will continue to search much more serious reasons in
order to buy an insurance", Tomasz BLAWAT, President, ING Uslugi Finansowe Poland,
has stated.
West Europe, CEE and the CSI States
In CEE and the CSI States the life insurance underwritings totalized EUR 18
billion in 2007. At the same time, if we differentiate two distinct European
areas, the growth in life insurance in CEE was 21% compared to "only" 5.5%
in the Western Europe in 2007.
But we have to remark, the underwritings volume concentration in the first
four countries in CEE, after this criteria. Therefore, we can distinguish:
Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia, which are responsible for two
thirds of the total life underwritings volume.
Life insurance, an investment against protection
In the previous year, in CEE, the clients' appetite for unit-linked products
has been remarked, in disadvantage for the traditional products which represented,
depending on the country, between 30-60% from the total underwritings.
According to the specialists that took part to the event, the situation of
the life insurance at the moment can be partially resolved through a reorientation
towards the traditional products.
In Russia, the life insurance gross written premiums had the value of EUR 635
million (RUR 22.7 billion) in 2007, growing with 41% in comparison with 2006.
For 2008 though, the Russian officials expect an underwritings decrease of
10-25% until RUR 20 billion (in the first nine months of 2008, life insurance
in Russia registered a decrease of 21.4%, compared to the same period of the
past year).
The conference also availed debates about the implementation of Solvency II,
the importance of this fact being highlighted by the saying "Bisogna cambiare
tutto per non cambiare nulla" ("All needs to be changed, in order for
everything to remain the same"). CEIOPS General Secretary, Carlos Montalvo
REBUELTA, talked about the necessity of a new system and about the fact that
Solvency I is being overwhelmed by the present situation. According to CEIOPS
representative, the European Solvency II implementation will probably take
place in 2012.
Media XPRIMM has been represented at the event by Vlad PANCIU, International
Markets Responsible and Oleg DORONCEANU, Russia&CIS Responsible.
