Belarusian insurance affairs didn’t make it to the top of our events-of-the-year poll yet charms of the local market are not lost on major international players.
Right before New Year’s Eve French-based Axa announced acquisition of 80% in B&B, second largest – and simply the largest private – insurer in Belarus. As the M&A tradition goes, Axa claims the Belarusian insurance industry has “a very significant potential for growth as less than 20% are covered with casco insurance and less than 15% of households benefit from home insurance”.
Judging by this description Belarus of tomorrow, with its ten million population, will be something like the Czech Republic today – small but successful. It just needs some help from experienced players.
However, according to Irina Merzlyakova, head of the Belarusian Association of Insurers (BAI), and some other local experts, penetration rates are by far not the only thing the market should work on. In their conversation with The Insurer (find the full version in the latest issue of our magazine), Belarusians named several key challenges of the country's insurance environment. Although head of BAI and her colleagues mainly described them in the context of the planned life market liberalisation – which, as we know now, didn’t happen in 2010 – some of the issues are rather relevant for non-life companies like B&B as well.
