Grawe Romania Cuts Growth Projection for ’08 Gross Premium Income

At the beginning of this year Grawe Romania forecast a 30% rise of its gross premium income from 101.4 million lei ($34.2 million/26.8 million euro) it reported for 2007.

“The current state of the global economy, as well as the obvious holdback in investment […] made us revise our projection to 20%. Still, the results so far are satisfactory and allow us be moderate optimists about next year,” Grawe Romania’s director general Peter Kasyk said in a statement.

“So we will stick to our development plans for 2008, and the strategy for new products and the opening of new branches remains unchanged,” he added.

Grawe Romania’s gross premium income rose by 24% to 110 million lei in the first nine months of this year. The insurer paid claims worth 3.9 million lei in the nine-month period. It reported no profit figures.

Grawe will aim to remain among the top five life insurers in Romania by the year’s end. It hopes to be in top 15 general insurers in the next two years.

Grawe bought Romanian insurance company Sara Merkur from fellow Austrian insurer Merkur Versicherung in January 2005. A merger of Grawe Romania and Sara Merkur was completed in March 2006.

(1 euro = 3.7787 Romanian lei)