Insurers shift focus to comprehensive insurance and retail clients

The unprecedented decline of the leasing market has forced insurers to find new growth resources, leading to intensified competition to attract individual clients on the comprehensive car insurance segment, after focusing on big, corporate clients for several years.
Insurers such as Ardaf, Allianz-Tiriac, Groupama, and Uniqa are conducting campaigns to promote comprehensive insurance and offer various advantages to attract new clients on this business segment.
They are now the only source of business that could at least in part fill the void left by the decline of the leasing market, and implicitly, of the insurance that goes with lease purchased cars (comprehensive insurance is mandatory for cars bought under a leasing contract).
In the first quarter of the year, overall underwriting from comprehensive insurance fell by 26% against the similar period in 2006, to 600 million RON, according to data from the Insurance Supervisory Commission (CSA).
“The decline of the comprehensive insurance market saw insurers take steps to curb it. There is a clear orientation towards retail clients, but I don’t think it necessarily has to do with the crisis, it is a natural trend. Both insurance companies and brokers are focusing more on retail,” explains Bogdan Andriescu, chairman of UNSICAR (the professional association of insurance brokers).