Brokers are complaining insurance companies are imposing them abusive clauses in intermediation contracts and are often refusing to pay them the owed fees, but the Insurance Supervision Commission (CSA) maintains the situations where brokers "forget" to transfer the money collected in from clients to insurers are rising.
"Brokers' failure to transfer the insurance premiums collected has become the rule lately. We found this during our inspections and in some cases brokers don't even have the money any more. The exact value of premiums that had to be transferred is often unknown and insurers bear part of the blame in this case," said Angela Toncescu, CSA chairperson, during the national conference of insurance brokers.
Insurance brokers last year handled gross premiums worth 3.2bn lei (some 760m euros), down 0.5% from 2009, according to CSA data. Premiums brokered by insurance brokers accounted for around 38% in insurers' turnovers, up 2% year-on-year, while the overall insurance market contracted by 5.7% in 2010 and reached gross premiums worth 8.36bn lei (2bn euros).
"CSA has monitored brokers' activity very closely and the action had as a result suspension of operations or licence withdrawals," Toncescu specified.
The commission penalised around 20 brokers in the past five months alone. However, 530 insurance brokers operate on the market, mostly small ones, and the top 100 have a cumulated market share of 83%.
Brokers are complaining insurance companies are imposing them abusive clauses in intermediation contracts and are often refusing to pay them the owed fees, but the Insurance Supervision Commission (CSA) maintains the situations where brokers "forget" to transfer the money collected in from clients to insurers are rising.
"Brokers' failure to transfer the insurance premiums collected has become the rule lately. We foun
