ArmInfo. INGO Armenia Insurance Company will get an opportunity to launch voluntary health insurance (VHI) products in cooperation with medical establishments within single insurance market of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). It is rather promising considering the big Armenian Diaspora of the EEU countries, says Mikhail Volkov, Director General of Ingosstrakh public joint stock insurance company, in an interview with ArmInfo.
He said INGO Armenia has an experience in providing VHI policies with coverage of medical expenses in the chain of clinics "Bud Zdorov" ("Be Healthy"). The Company is ready to offer a solution for treatment of a customer having, for instance, a medical insurance policy in Armenia, at a medical establishment in another EEU country. "Bud Zdorov" is a network of modern clinics with advanced equipment and highly qualified specialists. There are three such clinics in Moscow, and by one in St. Petersburg, Krasnodar, Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Ufa, Krasnoyarsk, and Novossibirsk. One more clinic will open in Sochi in May.
"I am speaking about gradual integration of insurance space, unification of rules and standards. A logical question: how quickly is this happening and when to expect any visible results? The EEU countries have much in common when it comes to regulation of the insurance activity, though all our markets developed independently and have their unique features that certainly impede the integration process. They have different procedures of providing insurance companies access to the market, different requirements to the capital size, solvency and financial stability standards, different methods of supervision. Their mediators operate in different legal framework. We have rich experience of cooperation with insurance markets of EEU, Ingosstrakh has reinsurance relations with Kazakhstan's market and has its representative office there. We have subsidiary companies in Armenia, Belarus and Kyrgyzstan. Being a company integrated into insurance post-soviet space we certainly support the idea of rapprochement of the insurance markets. The economies of our countries are closely connected to each other and intention to establish common insurance space is an objective necessity. But at the same time we better than others know that this is not an easy
process. For example we face exertions of protectionism toward national insurers or the companies with state participation, restricting measures of ranking character also have an impact on us. In this light all of us need a lot of work to do in order to overcome these obstacles", Volkov stated.
He brought European Union as an example where similar process successfully finished by establishment of common insurance space and this process took years. Ingosstrakh in its turn will seek to ensure that along development of integration its subsidiaries in abovementioned countries be ready for the upcoming changes better than their competitors in terms of applying up-to-date insurance technologies and practical experience. Ingosstrakh was and will always provide methodological and practical assistance to its subsidiaries the Director General added, and touching upon forecasts of growing of prices on insurance products he emphasized that this issue is very complex and hardly directly relates to enlargement of the market boundaries.
According to the Ranking of Insurance Companies, prepared by ArmInfo
INGO Armenia works in 16 types of non-life insurance. In VHI terms the company holds leadership by amount of collected insurance premiums and by paid compensations. Thus, as of January 1 2016 INGO Armenia collected premiums amounted to 1.5 bln AMD (with 9.9% y-o-y growth) and paid compensations amounted to 1.05 bln AMD (with 1.5% y-o-y decline). The company's share in total insurance premiums on VHI market makes 25% and in total compensations makes 32%. The share of VHI in total insurance premiums of the company totals 17.5% and in
total compensations VHI share is 30.3%. INGO Armenia was established in 1997. 75% of its capital belongs to Invest Police CJSC (a Russian company owned by INGOSSTRAKH), 25% - to the company's director Levon Altunyan.