Allianz eyes life insurance and private pension funds

“We estimate that Parliament and the Government will change the legal framework regulating the pension system in the future. This will lead to an increased importance of the private pension system – under the form of life insurance products and pension funds,” said Dr. Hennig Schulte-Noelle, chairman of Germany-based Allianz Group.

His visit in Bucharest on Tuesday was the first ever made since Allianz took over the controlling interests in Asigurari Ion ?iriac (ASIT) eight months ago.

The chairman of Allianz-?iriac Asigurari, Cristian Constantinescu, estimated that the life insurance market would grow at least ten times over the next ten years, saying, “the leader of a $60 million market is important, indeed, but the position on a $600 million market is much more important.”

He announced the company would release a “unit linked” type of life insurance product (life insurance with an investment component), but did not volunteer any details as to the target segment of the new product.

Constantinescu announced that the company had registered a 63% growth in H1 compared with last year. The premiums collected during the above-mentioned interval amount to $21 million and the premiums subscribed amount to $31 million.

The company’s target is to become the non-life insurance market leader and rank among the top five players on the life insurance and private pension funds market.

Allianz-?iriac accounted for some 12% of the non-life insurance market last year, compared with 9.6% in 1999. The company maintained at about 8-9% throughout 1996-1998, ranking third after Asirom and Astra. It also came third last year, but the top two players were Asirom and Omniasig, with a tight clash in store for 2001.

Dr. Schulte announced that Allianz-?iriac Asigurari and Allianz Romania would merge by the end of the year and the group’s operations on the Romanian market would be conducted under the Allianz-?iriac name.

Businessman Ion ?iriac said that, as far as he was concerned, he felt that the presence of the leading financial group in Europe on the Romanian market was a sign “we are starting to head in the right direction.”

?iriac added that, in his opinion, the visit of the group’s chairman to Bucharest right before PM Adrian Nastase’s official visit to Berlin was another event which had the same meaning.

Dr. Schulte, who came to Bucharest to see the Romanian reality for himself, feels Romania’s problems are typical for emerging markets.

He said he was hoping the Government “would have the strength to stabilise the situation,” and commented this was the first year of GDP growth and that the inflation had gone down, but “it’s still quite high, though.”