Societe Generale and Ergo, two large financial groups at a European level, announced they would bring their insurance companies to Romania by the end of this year and the beginning of next year, respectively.

French-based Societe Generale will set up an insurance company through Sogecap, the life insurance division of the SocGen group.

"Within the next two months, we will launch a life insurance company on the market, which we want to authorise as a manager of voluntary private pension funds," Damien Marechal, general manager of BRD Fond de Pensii (BRD Pension Fund), said on Wednesday.

He estimated that the new life insurance company of the group could become operational within about 8 months. For the time being, French-based SocGen is present on the Romanian market through BRD (the second largest bank in the system), as well as through leasing, consumer finance, brokerage, car fleet management, consulting and corporate finance and asset management companies, and more recently, through its mandatory private pensions company (the 2nd pillar).

For the distribution of mandatory pensions, BRD is using the bank's employees, a number of 1,500 sales agents to begin with, for whom the bank will pay no sales commission. All the other agents who sell mandatory pensions get an around 20 to 30-euro commission per every potential client they persuade to sign up with the pension fund. In the first day, BRD agents closed 3,500 contracts, according to representatives of the bank's pension company.

German group Ergo, which handled gross underwritten premiums worth 17 billion euros in 2006, will start its operations on the domestic life insurance market in the first half of next year. "To start with, we will concentrate on selling life insurance policies with additional coverage, such as accident-related clauses. Our offer will be mainly aimed at individu