Banks share OSAGO – Newspaper Kommersant No. 51 (7496) dated 03/27/2023

Despite the general growth of the OSAGO market, its major players Rosgosstrakh and Soglasie showed a serious decrease in fees at the end of the year. At the same time, relative newcomers Sberbank Insurance and Tinkoff Insurance have significantly increased their premiums and plan to increase their market share. According to experts, this is possible primarily by poaching clients from less fortunate players.

At the end of 2022, the OSAGO segment grew by 21%, to more than 273 billion rubles. year on year, follows from the data of the Bank of Russia. Payments increased by 11% to approximately RUB 159 billion. The average premium amounted to almost 7 thousand rubles.

However, not all players showed a positive result. One of the largest insurers in the OSAGO segment, Rosgosstrakh, showed a decrease in premiums by 38%, to 17 billion rubles. At SK Soglasie (included in the top 10), fees decreased by 6%, to 8.4 billion rubles.

Denis Makarov, member of the board of Rosgosstrakh, explains that the result was influenced by “work with the quality of OSAGO portfolio management and unpredictable growth in prices for spare parts.” This, the top manager specified, “led to a conservative assessment of the prospects for the development of OSAGO.” Andrey Zimny, head of the corporate insurance department at Soyuz Insurance, adds that in recent years, Rosgosstrakh has undergone a reorganization and a change in top management, which “certainly affects the company’s performance.”

Soglasiya says that in 2022 the company “had the task of improving the quality of the signed portfolio.” “Our goals for market share growth are concentrated in voluntary types of insurance; for OSAGO, the strategy is to maintain profitability,” the company explained.

Meanwhile, a number of large companies from the top 10 showed a serious increase in fees. Ingosstrakh’s premiums grew by 54% to 44 billion rubles. Vitaly Knyaginichev, Head of the Ingosstrakh Retail Business Directorate, noted that fees have increased due to the active development of the agent network and the expansion of the tariff corridor. Ugoria’s fees increased by 53%, to almost 13 billion rubles. premiums. VSK increased premiums by 45% to 26 billion rubles. Yugoria did not respond to Kommersant’s request, VSK declined to comment.

Tatyana Nikitina, senior director of NRA ratings for financial companies, explains that the excess growth rate of premiums over the average market for all these companies is due to an increase in the number of contracts concluded – by 21% for VSK and Ingosstrakh and by 27% for Yugoria.

But the highest growth rates were shown by Sberbank Insurance and Tinkoff Insurance, which are small for the segment. Their fees increased by 581%, to almost 4 billion rubles, and by 88%, to more than 7 billion rubles, respectively. Both companies plan to continue to actively develop in OSAGO.

Aleksey Yanin, Managing Director for Ratings of Insurance and Investment Companies at Expert RA, explains that individual insurers belonging to banking groups “are characterized by rapid growth due to the effect of a low base and a ready-made sales network and a loyal client base of the parent structure.”

Experts are confident that these companies have a chance in the coming years to push the players from the top ten. According to Mr. Zimniy, Sberbank Insurance and Tinkoff Insurance “possess huge opportunities in developing OSAGO sales among clients of the banks of the same name.”

Independent expert Kirill Bobylkov notes that, in fact, the market is now being redistributed in the face of experienced drivers who are historically distributed among large companies with large portfolios and are of interest to insurers. They will be pulled over by companies like Sberbank and Tinkoff, for which there is no need to maintain offices, attract agents, pay commissions to intermediaries – integration with parent banks allows you to attract customers remotely and at no extra cost, the expert explains.

However, Alexander Makarov, head of the Banki.ru insurance vertical’s project office, warns that if the OSAGO portfolio grows at an impressive pace, “not only fees but also losses will grow.”

Julia Poslavskaya