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Ten insurance companies are in the red, reported Interlife

10 February 2011 / 18:02:31  GRReporter
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Ten insurance companies in Greece are in the red on the eve of the introduction of Sοlvency II in 2012. This is the opinion of Yannis Votsaridis, president of the insurance company Interlife, which registered 260% profit in 2010, according to official data. The expert said that many companies in the sector could not meet the high demands of the new European rules for management and supervision of private insurers.

This in turn will require major changes in the insurance market in Greece and series of mergers and acquisitions "of smaller companies by their larger counterparts” are expected to happen soon. Companies’ capital adequacy difficulties increase due to the withdrawal of most of the life insurances. The number of terminated contracts increased significantly after the crisis, troubling many companies in the sector.

At the same time, the "stung" by Aspis Pronia decided to sue the state for negligence, claiming 138 million euros. "We set up a claim against the state for improper actions and omissions by supervisory authorities irregardless of whether these are the Ministry of Development, Private Insurance Supervisory Committee or the Securities Commission," told the lawyer of the 1500 victims Michalis Makroulakos for Sky Television. He is convinced that Aspis Pronia was a "pyramid" and apparently its activities were not properly supervised because the company registered losses each year.

The financial expert of Greek-American origin Elliot Iliopoulos said that it was easy to find out from the outset that there was something wrong with this company. He was hired by the lawyers of Aspis’ victims to make a professional assessment after examining the papers of the company. He said that once they started the search Pandora's Box opened. In his study, 70% of the company's capital was share capital which would not be a problem if it had not been assessed four or five times higher than its real value. Michalis Makroulakos explained that
if the supervisory authority had exercised strict control with the right people the current damages would be prevented.

 

Tags: EconomyMarketsAspis ProniaInsurance companies
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