“The year 2012 will be hard as the Romanian economy has been seriously affected by the financial crisis over the past three years and it is natural for the insurance industry to follow the trend imposed by the evolution of macroeconomic indicators. I believe the market will at best stagnate or post a growth of one or two percentage points. I firmly believe the Romanian market will not slip into recession,” Diaconescu said during a seminar on the insurance industry.
The Asirom official added mandatory insurance policies will continue to have a decisive role in the overall evolution of the domestic market.
“Our hope is for voluntary insurance products to gain more and more clients. 2012 will see a rise in focus on less traditional sales channels, such as the Internet,” said Diaconescu.
Asirom is one of the top five players in the insurance industry by the value of premium underwritten in 2010.
Mihai Tecu, CEO of BCR Asigurari, said the market declined in 2011 because of prices of mandatory car insurance polices (RCA).
“BCR had no problems from this point of view because it hasn’t sold too many RCA policies, but I have had to press our employees to bring in revenue from other types of insurance to make up for the lower RCA underwritings,” said Tecau.
He added he is optimistic about the domestic market’s evolution in the next years.
“I believe in this market, I believe in its future and the key word for this market should be change. Change will be the focus of our company’s strategy,” he said.
BCR Asigurari is currently in the process of merging with Omniasig, a move which is expected to make the new company the leader of the local market.
In the first three quarters of 2011, Romania’s insurance market declined 3.71%, to 6,08 billion lei (EUR1.5 billion), as general insurance declined 5.89%, to RON4.8 billion, according to preliminary data of the Romanian insurance regulator CSA.