ING Asigurări sales slightly up, but profit halves

ING Asigurări, the biggest life insurance company on the Romanian market, ended the first half of the year with a 5.5% rise in gross underwritten premiums, to 275.6 million RON (66.5 million euros). The company’s profit, however, halved in the same period, to 28.5 million RON in gross sum (6.9 million euros) following the reduction of certain taxes levied on insurance contracts.
The turnover of the biggest life insurer is starting to see a rebound after falling by over 20% last year, according to data of the Insurance Supervisory Commission.
“For the second half of the year I expect the VAT raise and the high number of redundancies in the public sector to place renewed pressure on the population’s revenues and saving ability. Under the circumstances, we expect the market to remain at the 2009 level, amid similar sales to last year’s,” said Cornelia Coman, general manager of ING Asigurări.
In 2009 the life insurance market fell for the first time, by 13%, to 1.62 billion RON (385 million euros).