Aviva unhappy with 15% growth

Aviva Romania saw 227bn ROL (6.1 million euros) in premiums subscribed last year, 37% more in ROL and 15% more in euros from the previous year. The growth is slightly lower than the company expected.”Our growth target was higher than attained in the end. Last year was not exactly good for life insurance because of the frequent legislation changes, which confused our clients. There are also some issues corporate-wise that need to be improved,” Adrian Allott, financial and actuarial director of the company explained. The expenses for employee benefits were rendered non-deductible by a Finance Ministry regulation issued in late last year. The gross premiums collected, which gauge the actual revenue the company derived from a specific policy, amounted to 5.9 million euros (219bn ROL), up about 15% from the year before. The company accounted for 3.8% of the life insurance market in Romania in 2002, and ranked only fifth behind ING Nederlanden, Asirom, AIG Life Insurance and Lukoil Asito and is expected to have kept about the same position in the chart (places 5-7), with some 4% market share. ZF