An announcement made by the Agricultural Insurance Pool (TARSİM) stated that in exchange for 736 million TL of premiums paid by the producers during 2017, the Pool paid the policyholders a sum of 850 million TL for their losses.

During 2017, 1.6 million agricultural insurance policies were issued; which insured 23 million decare of fields and 1.8 million beehives. As of today, total volume of premiums collected from the producers and farmers reached 1.6 billion TL; which resulted 29 billion TL total coverage of agricultural values. The number of cattle and sheep and goats reached 2.4 million, up by 50 percent compared to last year.

300 thousand claims files processed

The system processed 300 thousand claims files; most of which were claims due to hail losses. Malatya, Manisa, Giresun, Konya and Mersin were the top five cities in terms of number of losses during the year; while apricot, wheat, hazelnut, grapes, apple and sunflower were the top six products in terms of number of losses claimed.

Since 2006, when the Pool’s activities began, 9 million policies were issued in all sub-branches; while total accumulated premiums reached 6.5 billion TL. Size of insured lands reached 135 million decares; while number of insured producers/businesses increased to 2.4 million, number of insured cattle, sheep and goats to 8.7 million, number of insured beehives to 6.7 million, volume of payments made to policyholders to 4 billion TL and total sum insured to 123 billion TL.

Applications to TARSİM doubled

More than 500 claims were received from producers and farmers whose cultivated lands and greenhouses were damaged by the hail, storm and tornado events that occurred in the west of Antalya on 13 November. Following those claims, expertise activities began on 14 November and all the losses incurred by greenhouses were detected in one week. Nearly 300 producers received a total payment of 10 million TL in a very short time of one week. After this catastrophe, number of applications for agricultural insurance policies doubled compared to last year; indicating that producers and farmers began to behave more sensitively after experiencing losses.

Turkey has the world’s fastest growing agricultural insurance system

Agricultural insurance systems go back a hundred years in America and two hundred years in Europe. Despite having a very short history of 12 years, TARSİM is the most successful and fastest growing agricultural insurance model compared to its peered implemented in the rest of the world. Within the timeframe of these 12 years, insurance rate has reached 12 percent. Moreover, the system provides training and consultancy services to many regions ranging from USA to China.