More than half of the top ten general and life insurance companies saw their market shares go down in the first nine months, but there were also a few players whose business grew and they climbed a few positions in the ranking.
The first nine months of the year were a really difficult time for insurance companies, with many top ten players seeing their market shares go down compared with the same time of last year.
The top ten companies in general insurance, which accounts for 80% of the total insurance market, saw their underwritten premiums in euros go down by as much as 19.2% or up by as much as 129.5%.
The worst decline was reported by BCR Asigurari, because the company dropped its credit insurance business that accounted for quite a lot in the total. During the same period, Ardaf saw the fastest growth, because of its increase on the auto liability insurance segment where it operates some of the lowest rates.
The competition between the top two players, Allianz-Tiriac and Omniasig became even tighter, because the market share difference between the two narrowed greatly. Whereas in the first nine months of last year the difference stood at 5.4%, at the end of September it was down nine times, to 0.6%. Allianz-Tiriac ended the first nine months with 261 million-euro business from general insurance and Omniasig with 252.5 million euros, with only 8.8 million euros setting the two companies apart.
The insurers' growth calculated in euros also slowed down because of the depreciation of the RON against the European currency.
The top ten general insurance companies that posted declines of their market share compared with the first nine months of 2007 are Allianz-Tiriac (-2.1%), Asirom (-0.2%), BCR Asigurari (-3.0%), Unita (-0.6%), Asiban (-1.2%) and Generali (-0.8%). This means that six of the ten companies had their mark
