Aviva underwritten premiums, down 17% in H1

Aviva Asigurări, a major life insurer, ended the first half with a 17% drop in gross underwritten premiums against the same period of 2009, to 40m RON (9.5m euros), as a result of policy cancellation and the changed premium booking method.

“Cancellations hurt us in the first half, as well, but they’re falling. We have as many as one thousand policy cancellations per month. The decline against last year is not significant, as we did not see a strong increase at the crisis onset, either,” states Mihai Popescu, Aviva general manager.

The company is now improving its operational processes and services provided to clients, particularly on the financial assistance segment, in order to cut the number of policy cancellation cases.

Aviva registered rising sales through its own agencies and falling ones through banks in the first six months of 2010. The company has 32 agencies and over 400 agents. It also has bancassurance partnerships with BRD, Piraeus Bank, RBS, Credit Europe Bank and BRD Finance.

“The new business equally came from unit-linked and protection insurance. As for unit-linked, 80% of clients chose RON-denominated funds and 20% bet on the euro, there are no significant changes from last year”.