The Polish Insurance Association will join the agreement on the rules and mode of mutual recognition of recourse claims. The companies, united in the Polish Insurance Association, which have signed the agreement so far constitute approximately 90% of the companies which operate on the third-party insurance market. Other companies are to join the agreement in the near future.
Also BRE Ubezpieczenia TU and Concordia Polska TUW declared that they wish to join the agreement.
The execution of the agreement will considerably help the drivers. The client who is not the perpetrator of the accident and who voluntarily covers the loss within the scope of his or her own comprehensive motor insurance (Polish autocasco) will be sure that the procedure of quoting the loss and paying the compensation will be considerably reduced.
- Thanks to the cooperation of the insurance companies of the Polish Insurance Association, an important agreement has been created. It is essential that this agreement will be concluded between companies which constitute almost the entire market of the third-party insurance. Such agreement provides a great comfort to the Polish drivers – says Jan Grzegorz Prądzyński, the president of the Polish Insurance Association.
Jan Grzegorz Prądzyński, the President of the Polish Insurance Association, has written a letter to Ms Halina Olendzka, the Insurance Ombudsman.
The letter is connected with the recently published articles of Ms Małgorzata Więcko, who represents the Bureau of the Insurance Ombudsman. In the opinion of the Association, these articles are not only unreliable, but they often contain false information – concerning not only the insurance market, but also the regulations of law. The author (lawyer by education) tries to discredit, with the use of her articles, one of the models of insurance activity – the direct model.
She suggests, among other things, that the direct insurers operate under other legal regulations than traditional insurance companies – which is, of course, not true.
She gives false information on the access of clients of the direct companies to the information about products, general conditions of insurance and possibility to consult the customer service departments. The author, by publishing false information, does not mention either the scale of the alleged problem or does not provide any examples of her discoveries. It is ever so worrying, because it is the Insurance Ombudsman which is appointed by law to represent and protect the business of the clients of insurers.
The publications of Ms Małgorzata Więcko not only mislead the clients, but can even result in serious fears of the clients about the reliability of the protection provided by the insurer.
It is through such texts that the institution of the Insurance Ombudsman, instead of creating insurance awareness in Poland, intentionally creates insurance illiteracy.
In the opinion of the Polish Insurance Association, all the information provided by the Insurance Ombudsman should be provided with special care and accuracy, whereas the said publications lack these two features.
The PDF version of the information
A letter of the President of the Polish Insurance Association to the Insurance Ombudsman
The Polish Insurance Association and the Faculty of Economic Sciences of Warsaw University invite for an open lecture concerning the systems of disaster effect insurance in Europe.
It is the third lecture within the scope of the Insurance Knowledge Sharing Programme which is an educational series directed to students, research personnel of the faculty of economic sciences and other interested people. The programme consists of two elements: a series of lectures carried out by experts in the insurance market and also paid training periods for the students of the Faculty of Economic Sciences of Warsaw University in the Polish Insurance Association.
The lecture concerning the disaster effect insurance will be held on 14th December (Monday) at 13.15 in room 203 in the registered office of the Faculty of Economic Sciences of Warsaw University (ul. Długa 44/50, Warsaw). The lecture will be carried out by Andrzej Maciążek, a member of the management board of the Polish Insurance Association.
Additional information on the programme can be found here.
The information on the programme can also be found on the Internet website of the Faculty of Economic Sciences of Warsaw University.
We would like to invite all the interested persons – students, representatives of the academic environment and also other people interested in the subject of insurance – to take part in the lecture.
RGA International Reinsurance Company Limited department in Poland is a new member of the Polish Insurance Association.
Currently, the Association is made up of 79 entities. RGA International Reinsurance Company Limited department in Poland is the only department of an international insurer operating in Poland.
The Managing Director of RGA International Reinsurance Co Ltd department in Poland is Sylwester Rakowski.
The information in the PDF version
The Polish Insurance Association has become a content partner of a special supplement to “Dziennik Gazeta Prawna” devoted to the issues of insurance. The supplement will come out on the Wednesday (9th December of the current year) issue of the newspaper.
Issues connected with modern forms of insurance selling, health insurance and legal protection insurance will be presented in the supplement.
It is the first supplement of this kind to “Dziennik Gazeta Prawna”, whose partner is now the Polish Insurance Association. More in-depth publications presenting our market in the papers will appear next year.
The supplement to “Dziennik Gazeta Prawna” is a continuation of the action, started in the autumn of the current year, which is to propagate insurance services in special partner programmes made with newspaper publishers. A great deal of interest was aroused by the project realized together with one of the biggest women’s magazines – “Pani Domu”.
The information in the PDF version
A new member – Atradius Credit Insurance NV Spółka Akcyjna Department in Poland – joins the Polish Insurance Association.
Currently, the insurance self-government is made up of 80 entities. Atradius offers a vast range of solutions in the field of liability managing which protects companies against market threats in the local and global trade.
Paweł Szczepankowski is the Managing Director of Atradius Credit Insurance NV Spółka Akcyjna Department in Poland.
The public, as well as the non-public hospitals have nowadays the right to cooperate with private insurers apart from the agreement with the National Health Fund. Commercial agreements of this kind would help to reduce the queues and would provide the system of health care with additional money. The problem is that not all of the health care institutions and their owners know that they are entitled to such cooperation.
According to the data of the National Health Fund, today 650 thousand people are waiting to be admitted to hospitals and to undergo operations. At the same time, only 70 percent of the rooms which are available to the patients are used. Why, despite free rooms, are the queues longer year by year? – It needs to be clearly stated that the long waiting does not result from too low number of doctors or the lack of rooms for the patients. In Poland, we do not talk about the queues for procedures; these are the queues for public money – says Paweł Kalbarczyk, the chairman of the Health and Accident Insurance Committee of the Polish Insurance Association.
This “queue for money” results from the current form of the health care system in which all the Polish hospitals must cooperate with one system payer – the National Health Fund. Every operation performed over the limit set by the Fund means that a given hospital is indebted. Consequently, the health care institutions, despite the fact that they could perform many more operations, must stick to the limits set by the agreement with the National Health Fund. – The only solution to this problem is the private hospital insurance. The hospitals would use its potential by providing commercial services whose costs cannot be covered by the National Health Fund. Such cooperation means not only providing the health care system with additional money, but also the fulfilment of the public service, that is providing high standard of services to all those who need it – says Paweł Kalbarczyk.
It results from the analyses carried out by the reputable law office – Domański Zakrzewski Palinka – that every health care institution has a right to render commercial services in cooperation with insurers; regardless of the fact whether it is a public institution or a non-public one.
Non-public institutions are run by independent entrepreneurs or self-government companies and they have a right to freely determine the entities with which they want to cooperate and the conditions of this cooperation. There is a slightly different situation in case of public institutions which are established by self-governments. – The justification for public institutions to conclude the same agreements as the non-public ones is, among others, the political task of self-governments concerning the recognition and determination of health needs found within the governed area of the self-government which are not fulfilled due to the lack of possibilities to be financed by the National Health Fund. The concluding of agreements with insurers is nothing else but the fulfilment of such needs – explains Dr Marcin Matczak, a partner in the Domański Zakrzewski Palinka law office. Furthermore, the legislator, in the regulations on the health care institutions, directly allowed for the public institutions to conclude agreements with private insurers.
The representatives of the Polish Insurance Association stress that a great part of self-governments and public institutions is not aware of the right to conclude agreements with commercial partners. Making them aware of this possibility is a benefit for all the entities operating on the health care market. It results from the estimates of the Association that the widespread hospital insurance means – for the health care system – additional PLN 300,000,000 within the first five years. It is several dozen thousand more operations per year and quicker reduction of queues; and there is no need to raise the compulsory health insurance fees. The private hospital policies will help to reduce the range of the greatest absurdity which is functioning in the current system – limits on the planned operations and the growing queues for these operations.
It is not enough to raise the awareness to propagate the insurance. Poland is probably the only country in the EU where there is no notion of private health insurance in the regulations of law. Furthermore, the regulations do not provide any tax reliefs or exemptions connected with the concluding of an agreement of private health insurance. Such reliefs have already been implemented in two thirds of the countries which are the members of the EU. – Without a clear definition, in the regulations of law, of private health insurance, without determining the roles of particular entities in such a system and without incentives which allow for the development of private insurance, we can expect, in Poland, only longer queues for operations and still lower standard of the rendered services – claims Paweł Kalbarczyk.
The press information
The presentation of Paweł Kalbarczyk
The presentation of Dr Marcin Matczak
The last lecture within the scope of „The programme of sharing the insurance knowledge”, organized by the Polish Insurance Association and the Faculty of Economic Sciences of Warsaw University, took place on 13th April. The lecture was entitled “Transport insurance – where does its price come from?” and was conducted by Witold Jaworski, a trustee of PZU. During the lecture, the participants had the opportunity to become familiar with the methods of estimating the risk and insurance fees in the transport insurance. Witold Jaworski also presented the factors (of the drivers and vehicles as well) which influence the price of the insurance.
The second international conference entitled „The insurance in the changing world” took place in the Grange St. Paul’s Hotel in London on 11th June. The host of the all-day long conference was the CEA.
The leading world insurers, representatives of supervision authorities and representatives of consumers participated in the conference. The lectures concerned, among other things, the problems of Solvency II, the role of the insurance market and the supervision in the crisis conditions. The lecturers included, among others, Peter Braumüller, the chairman of the International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS), Alberto Corinti, the assistant managing director of the CEA.
The entire report of the conference and all the lectures are available below:
The Polish Insurance Association, together with the Polish Financial Supervision Authority, prepared the regulations concerning the procedure of examining claims, within the scope of renting a substitute vehicle, filed in the losses covered by the third-party insurance for the owners of motor vehicles (Polish OC).
The cooperation of both institutions resulted in the development, by the Association, of the regulations approved by the Polish Financial Supervision Authority. Thus the document setting the standards within the scope of examining the claims to reimburse the expenses on the renting of a substitute vehicle was created; it specifies more precisely some regulations contained in the recommendation of the Polish Financial Supervision Authority which was directed to insurance companies. The document will substitute the recommendation of supervision issued in December. The standard of the procedure concerning the substitute vehicles will make the process of examining claims of this type clearer and friendlier for the client.
The acceptance, by the insurance companies, of the aforementioned regulations will ensure the same manner of examining the issue of a substitute vehicle in every insurance company in Poland.
This document specifies which circumstances the insurer will take into account while examining the claim for a substitute vehicle and how the insurer will specify the period when it will cover the expenses of renting the vehicle. The client who will be familiar with the regulations will be able to systematically estimate within which scope he or she can count on reimbursement of the incurred expenses.
