Between January and August 2020, the average prices of motor liability insurance decreased in Italy by more than 5%. This was stated by the president of ANIA, Maria Bianca Farina, opening the annual meeting of the Association of Italian insurance companies (read the full intervention). “This trend – she added – reflected the companies' decision to facilitate policyholders who had not used the vehicle during the lockdown. In fact, the frequency of claims had dropped significantly in the closing months, to then gradually rise again in the summer months towards the values of 2019".
Ania once again asks politics to "rethink the regulatory system of car insurance in a structural way, with the aim of further reducing the overall cost for the community, the only way to reduce prices in favor of all, favoring virtuous practices and avoiding unnecessary costs". Farina calls for the growth dynamics of compensation for serious injuries to be controlled, as is the case in other European countries, and to face "in an even more incisive way the phenomenon of insurance fraud and those related to organized crime".
INSURANCE: COLLECTION -6% IN 15 MONTHS
Farina then underlined that the insurance sector "has not remained immune from the shock" caused by the pandemic, to the point that net inflows fell by 15% on an annual basis in the first half of the year. In the quarter of the lockdown alone - from March to May - the drop in life premiums "was 35% compared to 2019 - said the number one of ANIA - In June, with the end of the exceptional measures, there was an initial trend reversal, which was followed by further consolidation in the months of July and August, when funding returned to the levels of the same months of 2019".
FARINA: "STOP ASSISTANCE: LET'S CUT THE BUREAUCRACY"
Farina then turned to the Government and Parliament, stressing the need for concrete support for the production system: "No favours, no discounts, no raindrops but measures that guarantee adequate resources for emergencies, that review the heavy tax regime, bring down the infinite barriers of bureaucracy, provide an efficient and modern network of infrastructures. The challenge is not to allow the country's economy to turn into a multiplier of unproductive welfare".
FARINA: "WE NEED MORE FLEXIBLE RULES"
Furthermore, according to the president of ANIA, "in the continuing scenario of low interest rates, in order for the insurance industry to be able to continue to carry out its activity as institutional investor and to offer medium-long term products, it is urgent to have a framework of more flexible rules”. For example, Farina underlines the need to "secure the capital gains present in the separate management of traditional products and reinterpret their guarantees for the future, offering a new generation of effective and prudent products".
IVASS, FRANCO: "SOLID INSURANCE, BUT STRENGTHEN THE ASSETS"
The Italian insurance system "remains solid overall even in a difficult context", said the president of IVASS, Daniele Franco, underlining however that "the risks associated with the economic effects of the new increase in infections confirm the need to preserve and strengthen the financial position of the companies”.
In his speech to the ANIA assembly, Franco underlined that, "after the tensions of the first months of the year, the progressive easing of volatility on the financial markets and the reduction of the Btp-Bund spread, which fell from 235 points in mid-March to approximately 130 in recent days, have allowed the gradual recovery of the solvency ratios of companies, back to levels close to those of the end of 2019".
The number one of the Insurance Supervisory Authority also noted that "at the end of September the solvency index of the sector as a whole returned to values close to 210%" and that "no insurance group had values below 130%. The recovery of the indices also reflects the interventions to strengthen equity and the prudent dividend distribution policies. The letters from IVASS in the last few months of March and July focused attention on containing the distribution of dividends by the companies in order not to disperse the capital buffer. Our analyzes show that the contribution of containing the distribution of dividends to the increase in the sector's solvency index was 7 percentage points”.
