October 24 (SeeNews) - Romania's insurance market might exceed 10 billion euro ($14.25 billion) in 2017, more than six times greater than last year's figure, the local office of Germany's Roland Berger Strategy Consultants said on Wednesday.
"The total value of gross premium incomes in 2006 in Romania amounted 1.6 billion euro, to which non-life insurance contributed 80%," a study by Roland Berger showed.
The market in Romania, which joined the EU in January, grew by 30% in 2006 versus 2005 and in the next ten years its annual growth has the potential to surpass that in countries like Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic, the consultancy company said.
"Still, the insurance market has a much smaller penetration rate than in the rest of Europe, with less than 1.4% of the gross domestic product (GDP) going for non-life insurance and about 0.3% for life insurance," Codrut Pascu, Managing Director with Roland Berger told a news conference to present the study.
According to the research, leading insurance companies in Romania pay more attention to sustaining profitability than to their market share. But the latter is important and insurers in Romania tend to pay on average more for securing market position than companies in other countries from the CEE region, which reflects in their cost ratio.
Top players on the Romanian insurance market as of the end of June were Allianz-Tiriac, part of Allianz Group, with 19.5% share and 173 million euro gross premium income; followed by Omniasig, majority-owned by Vienna Insurance Group, with 112.8 million euro and 12.7% market share. Third place, according to the Roland Berger study, went to BCR Asigurari, part of BCR Group, with 11.7% market share and 103.5 million euro gross premium income.
($ = 0.7018 euro)