Wednesday, November 12 2014 18:09
Armenia needs long money for developing its insurance market: CB
ArmInfo. Armenia needs long money (long-term savings and investments) for developing its insurance market, Deputy Chairman of the Central Bank of Armenia Nerses Yeritsyan said during a conference on progressive development of insurance in Armenia on Wednesday.
"We need certain consumer behavior, when people save and invest money. The international practice shows that insurance can be very profitable when insurers manage to establish connection between savings and investments," Yeritsyan said.
He said that the key tasks of Armenia's insurance system today are to develop insurance institutions, to reduce tariffs, to increase compensation, to develop infrastructure, to introduce quality requirements, to protect the interests of consumers, and to form behavior rules.
"Over the last years our insurance system has recorded quite good results. Since 2006 our insurance premiums have grown to 0.7-0.8% of GDP. Due to compulsory insurance mechanisms, today we have an efficient compulsory third party car insurance system," Yeritsyan said.
"Compulsory insurance is the first step towards life insurance. Today we are trying to fill gaps in our laws so as to be ready for life insurance," Yeritsyan said.
Director of the Economics and Business Institute of the Russian- Armenian Slavonic University, Professor Edward Sandoyan said that Armenia does not yet have developed insurance culture and this is why it does not have life insurance.
"It is hard to say what is more important to have culture or to have institutions. In any case, we are trying to introduce compulsory types of insurance even though the Central Bank is against this for certain reasons," Sandoyan said, noting that Armenia has much to do yet to develop its insurance system, particularly, to study and to use the international experience and to apply innovative solutions.
The organizers of the conference are the Central Bank of Armenia, the Union of Manufacturers and Business of Armenia, the Slavonic University and Prime Insurance Brokers.
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