Turkish insurance market proved its maturity in 2020

Atilla Benli, Chairman of the Insurance Association of Turkey, underlined that many extraordinary things happened all at once in the past year. “We are proud to be standing by our policyholders and doing our part by explaining insurance exists for extraordinary circumstances such as earthquakes, floods, and pandemic outbreaks,” he said.

Insurance Association of Turkey (TSB) issued a statement emphasizing that they are proud to see insurance and pension market initiated exemplary practices in 2020, when we had to face many challenges at once. All those events made a great contribution to increasing insurance awareness, while reflecting on the year-end results thanks to rapid actions taken by the market. Atilla Benli stated that 2020 was a tough year for everyone as earthquake, flood and hailstorms happened in addition to the coronavirus outbreak.

“Insurance market allows people to be confident about tomorrow by insuring their risks. In 2020, we saw the importance of being insured and how an unexpected risk such as a pandemic outbreak can impact the world in such a great scale. Since the first day of the coronavirus outbreak, we have taken many steps towards supporting our State and Nation and worked tirelessly to stand by our policyholders. We took action to ensure that treatment costs arising due to pandemic are paid by private health insurance policies, even though it was not included in the standard scope. As per the recommendations issued by our Association, the market extended the payment terms for policies, along with other payment conveniences. We took swift actions following the earthquakes as well as floods and hailstorms that occurred in summer months, and rapidly initiated loss adjustment and claims payment processes. We paid a total of 717 million TL for earthquakes that hit Elazığ and Malatya on January 24, and İzmir on October 30.  For pandemic related losses, we paid 425 million TL in life insurance branch and 137 million TL in health insurance branch. This brings the total of payments made for the big events of 2020 to 1 billion 279 million TL. As a result of the actions taken by insurance companies and recommendations by the Association, an additional 400 million TL premium support was provided for policyholders. In the end, we are rightfully proud that our market has provided a total support and contribution of 1 billion 679 million TL against all these disasters during 2020.” 

We are happy to see an increased demand for insurance

Benli stated that the market completed claims payments rapidly to provide relief for suffering policyholders. “As the insurance market, our priority is to satisfy our policyholders and simplify their lives. We have been truly happy to see an increased interest in insurance. As a result, in 2020, premium production of insurance market has increased by 19.3 percent compared to the previous year; reaching 82.6 billion TL in total. Premium volume of non-life insurance reached 68.1 billion TL, up by 17.1 percent; and life insurance reached 14.4 billion TL, up by 27 percent. Private pension funds continued to write new success stories with non-stop growth in volume. According to the statistics announced by the Pension Monitoring Center as of 31 January 2021, total number of BES and Auto-Enrollment participants exceeded 12.6 million, bringing total fund size (including state subsidy funds) to nearly 170 billion TL. To top it all, increased awareness of our citizens attracted the attention of new investors. Thanks to the trust instilled in the market by our companies, ISE Insurance Index was among the best-performing ISE indices with 72 percent in 2020,” Atilla Benli added.

Benli said that all players of the insurance market adopted a devoted and solidarity-based approach, including insurance companies, agencies, experts and brokers.
“We are happy to have brought insurance into a better view as a long term stakeholder that stands by them through thick and thin. We will keep working eagerly to provide value for our country and our citizens, while continuing to express the importance of insurance.”