About 90% of the money went towards settling injury and death claims and the rest to material damages.
“The year 2013 is the third in a row when total claims settled for injury and death exceeded the volume of claims settled for material damage. “We estimate the trend to maintain in the coming years,” said Sorin Greceanu, general manager of the fund at an event organized by the trade association of insurance and reinsurance companies in Romania, UNSAR.
There are no aggregate data about the payments made by insurers for claims for injury and death by car accidents last year at the moment. Nine months into the year, payments stood at RON251 million or 18% of the total claims settled for auto liability policies. If the percentage remained unchanged, then such payments probably amounted to RON350 million in the entire 2013.
In comparison, such payments stood at about RON30 million in 2008. The volume of injury and death claims settled remains very low compared with the mature markets in Western Europe and even with some markets in the region. This is partly because people have only recently discovered that a simple auto liability policy covers more than material damages.
On the other hand, Sorin Greceanu says claimants demand too much in many cases and so such cases often go to court, due to lawyers that specialized therein, whose fee may amount to as much as half of the amount the claimant gets.
The Street Victims Protection Fund settled claims for 577 people and approved more than 1,000 claims for injury and death last year. The difference between the two shows how many clients choose to go to court once negotiations failed.
Average claim settled by the fund last year stood at RON33,000, 10% lower than in 2012. Still the average claim is three times higher than in 2008.
The fund has about RON72 million available, as insurers licensed to sell auto liability policies contribute 1% of their revenue on the segment to the fund’s reserves annually. Last year’s contributions amounted to some RON24 million.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)