According to data collected by PIU, in the first six months of 2012 property insurance companies paid out their customers over 7 billion PLN in compensation, while life insurance claims amounted to over 12 billion PLN.
Motor insurance market
In this sector during first half of 2012, insurance companies paid out 2.7 billion PLN in claims for automobile liability insurance and 1.74 billion PLN on the account of accident and theft insurance. The above data shows that in terms of automobile liability insurance general amount of claims increased by 2.55% in comparison to last year, while accident and theft insurance claims dropped by 10.5%.
Additionally, comparing the first six months of the current and last year:
• 2.1% more accident and theft insurance policies were bought;
• Average accident and theft insurance claim increased by 1.77%;
• The number of accident and theft insurance liability claims dropped by as much as 12%, from over 429,000 to 377,000;
“This means we’re observing a stagnation in a trend noticed already in the first quarter of 2012. Drivers report less smaller damages. This is most probably related to the fact that the Insurance Guarantee Fund has introduced an insurance discount verifying tool. In the opinion of Jan Grzegorz Prądzyński, President of the Board of the Polish Chamber of Insurance, smaller number of damage claims during the first six months of 2012 is due to good weather conditions in the first quarter and lack of car crashes caused by snow and big temperature fluctuations.
A more visible increase has been noticed in the field of automobile liability insurance damage claim – it increased by 7.5% in one year, from 4,800 PLN to 5,160 PLN. That is why generally the amount of damage claim increased though the number of damages dropped – from 546,000 to 521,000. In automobile liability insurances we can observe a positive technical result for the second consecutive time. However, it is already lower than in the first quarter of current year and amounts to 15.8 million PLN for the whole market.
“Technical result never increases linearly therefore it’s very hard to speculate today whether at the end of the year it will be positive or negative, especially that the pressure for higher compensations is ongoing and no-one can predict weather conditions for the last quarter of 2012” – says Jan Grzegorz Prądzyński.
First half of 2012 saw an increase in automobile liability insurance contributions by 8% in comparison to previous year, totalling in 4.4 billion PLN, with the number of insurance agreements rising by 2% (to 17.9 million PLN) in the same period. Accident and theft insurance premiums amounted to 2.9 billion PLN, which is 1.37% more than the year before, with the number of insurance policies purchased rising by 2.14% to 5 million PLN.
Property insurance market (without motor insurances)
Data for the first half of 2012 does not include latest meteorological disasters damage. Jan Grzegorz Prądzyński remarks: “Financial effects of these disasters will only be visible in financial statements for the third quarter and that is why we still have to wait a couple of months before finally evaluating the situation of the property insurance market.”
What might be interesting is the dramatic increase in the number of compensations paid out as aircraft insurance claims. However, it’s a one-time situation which is a result of a number of compensations for large-scale damages. Total amount of property insurance (excluding motor insurance agreements) compensations paid out in the first half of 2012 amounted to 2.66 billion PLN which is over 15,8% more than a year before. Property insurance premiums amounted to 6.3 billion PLN, which is 8.13% more than the year before.
It’s worth noticing that, in comparison to the same period of last year, there was no visible increase in the purchase of fire and natural disasters insurance (Group 8), just a small 1.79% rise.
Life insurance market
Life insurance claims remained on the similar level in comparison to last year: After the first half of 2012 they amounted to 12 billion PLN, which is 2.4% less than a year before. Just like in previous quarters, majority of compensations paid were related to Group I which can be linked to the period of short-term deposit contracts conclusion.
Group I also includes the most of life insurance premiums – almost 11.2 billion PLN, which is 21% more than a year before. A rise of interest in capital fund insurances have also been observed: the amount of premiums in this sector increased by 15% to 6 billion PLN, a the number of agreements by 8.8%, to 2.73 million PLN. Total amount of life insurance premiums came up to 19.6 billion PLN in the first half of 2012, which is over 17% more than last year.
Net financial result
Property insurance companies closed the first half of 2012 with 2.48 billion PLN profit, which is 6.5% less than last year. There was a small decrease in profitability in life insurance companies whose net profit came up to 1.7 billion PLN, i.e. 2.6% less than last year.
More information can be found in the TABLE
