State - insurers' best friend

The insurance companies had invested more than $15 million in listed securities by the end of last November, that is about 7% of their total financial investments, the Insurance Supervision Commission (CSA) announced.
Although insurers – especially life insurance companies throughout the world are among the top investors on the capital market due to their very high liquidity, their Romanian peers are much more conservative.
Therefore, the State remains the insurers’ best friend in terms of investments, as two thirds of their placements ($135 million) are in form of T-bills.
“The financial instruments market in Romania is extremely narrow, so that investment choices are rather limited. The monetary instruments and the T-bills, which are risk free, are very important when calculating the solvency margin,” explains Marius Onofrei, press officer of Allianz-tiriac, one of the top three insurers on the market in terms of gross premiums collected.
The remaining investments made by insurance companies are in form of ROL and foreign currency deposits (about one fifth of the total investments, that is $45 million), unlisted securities and municipal bonds.
Unlisted securities account for quite a large share in the total: nearly 7%, that is $14.3 million. This can be explained by considering the shares held by the insurance companies in subsidiaries (such as Omniasig – with Omniasig Asigurari de Viata) or in companies part of the same group (such as Asirom in other companies within InterAgro).
Insurance companies on the Romanian market are not so conservative when it comes to investing abroad, though.  Four insurers totalled 188bn ROL ($5.4 million) invested on international markets, by the end of November last year,  half of which in listed securities and the rest in bonds, that is close to the investment structure used by the insurers operating on mature markets.
This is very different from the structure on the Romanian market: 14% in shares (both listed and unlisted) and the rest in T-bills and banking deposits.