Insurance market exceeds $700m

The gross premiums collected by insurance companies amounted to nearly 24,000bn ROL ($725 million) last year, the representatives of the Insurance Supervision Commission (CSA) announced. “Judging from the estimates based on revenue derived from the operating fees, the gross premiums collected by all the insurance companies on the Romanian market amounted to about 23 -24,000bn ROL last year,” said Mirela Antohi, CSA’s head of PR. The insurance law binds insurance companies to pay an operating fee every year, which turns into revenue for the CSA’s budget. This fee is worth no more than 0.3% of the gross premiums collected. Which means the operating fees alone paid by insurers got CSA over $2 million (72bn ROL) revenues in 2003. In case the market reaches the upper limit of the period Antohi was talking about, then this means it will grow by 45% in dollars to $725 million, which is the highest growth since 1998. The growth is largely due to the stagnation of the USD against the ROL, as the EUR/USD rate developments in 2003 made the USD lose ground against the ROL and end the year 2.3% lower than in late 2002. If calculated in euros, the market went up some 20% from 530 million euros to 620-645 million euros. There are no final data about how big the life insurance market or the general insurance market were in 2003 yet. The revenue trend among the top players, however, shows the life insurance may have grown 25-35% to $160-$170 million, while the general insurance progressed by 44-55% to $540-$550 million. ZF