Plenty of room on insurance market

Only one in ten Romanians has a life insurance policy and only one in four has a property insurance contract, a poll conducted by the market research company GfK shows. The percentage is overwhelmingly lower than in Poland, Hungary or the Czech Republic, where 50% to 75% of the respondents have property insurance and 40% to 70% have life insurance. The GfK poll is, after all, in line with the financial results of the insurance companies. The Romanian life and general insurance market amounts to $500 million, compared with $3 or $4 billion in Hungary or Poland. The poll shows that, in terms of insurance, the Czech Republic, Slovenia or Slovakia have already gone West, as the percentage of those who say they have a property insurance policy – 75% is closer to the one in Austria – 94%. Moreover, the share of those who have a life insurance policy in Slovenia and Slovakia (73% and 77% respectively) is much higher than that in Austria (63%). ZF