The content of the article:
- Decline in demand for car insurance
- The situation with the leading insurance company in Ukraine
- Drivers without insurance assistance
- Legal advice
- Problems of organizing the work of insurance companies
- How to change the situation
Despite the legally enshrined penalties for drivers who have not entered into a car insurance agreement, in 2018 the number of insured car owners in Ukraine sharply decreased.
As a result of studying the statistics of road traffic accidents since the beginning of the year, analysts pointed out the fact that in a third of accidents, at least one of the drivers did not have insurance documents.
The dubious "superiority" in this area is held by the capital. There are two to three times less number of uninsured owners in Odessa and Kharkov regions.
Decline in demand for car insurance
According to the law, if during the inspection of the vehicle it turns out that the driver does not have insurance documents, he must pay a fine of UAH 850. If an accident occurs through the fault of an uninsured car owner, then he is obliged to pay compensation for the damage to the MTIBU fund.
It would seem that the wording is clear, the situation is the same: it is necessary to insure the car. But contrary to the current legislation and penalties, the demand for compulsory car insurance in Ukraine at the beginning of this year shows a rapid decline.
According to statistical analyzes of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the number of fines for operating a vehicle without a compulsory insurance policy began to grow not yesterday. Already in 2017, statistics pointed to the fact that the number of car owners without insurance policies increased sharply. The trend has intensified in 2018.
Concerned about the situation, the lawmakers tried to raise the topic of increasing fines for unscrupulous car owners who do not have insurance. But you need to understand that a fine is not a method of dealing with the cause of the situation that has arisen. Of course, if the amount of the fine is ridiculously small, there will always be citizens who decide to save money on the contract with the insurance company. But 850 hryvnia is not such a small amount.
Consequently, the reasons for the sharp decline in demand for insurance lie in a different area than trying to save money on concluding a contract. For what reason do Ukrainian drivers refuse insurance?
The situation with the leading insurance company in Ukraine
At the beginning of this summer, the Ukrainian media actively circulated information that one of the leading companies in the country "Dominanta", which was engaged in car insurance at that time, had a license withdrawn, since the company was bankrupt. At that time, the company entered into no less than 300 thousand insurance contracts with car owners with car owners.
People who have law-abiding car insurance are faced with a situation when the offices of "Dominanta" are closed, employees of the organization are dismissed, and it is absolutely not clear where to go if it is necessary to receive payment as a result of an accident.
Back in 2013, Dominanta was the most promising insurer in the country. They said that Dominant's insurers owe their success to Sergei Arbuzov, at that time the head of the National Bank of Ukraine.
The NBU car fleet and passengers of the Ukrainian railways were insured exclusively by Dominanta. But after the events of 2014, the affairs of the insurance company began to deteriorate rapidly.
In 2015, the question was raised about the exclusion of "Dominant" from the list of members of the UTSB, where all insurance organizations in the country are located, that is, the company that is called "walked on the brink" even then. By 2018, the situation had taken shape finally, ending with the declared bankruptcy procedure.
At the beginning of 2018, Insurance Tor magazine published information according to which, in 2017, Dominanta entered into insurance contracts with the population for a total of about UAH 164 million in insurance premiums.
At the end of March 2018, MTIBU announced another indicator - by this time the company had concluded 287 thousand insurance contracts. According to statistics, for every one hundred contracts there are two insured events, for each of them the average payment amount is 17 thousand hryvnia, which adds up to about 98 million hryvnia. At the moment, insurers do not have such funds.
Drivers without insurance assistance
Since the insurance company is not able to fulfill its financial obligations, a law comes into force, according to which MSTBU assumes obligations for insurance payments. In fact, this means that the car owner will have to wait at least two to three years for the fulfillment of the insurance obligation.
This situation cannot be acceptable, since the repair of a vehicle must be carried out without delays and delays, otherwise the car begins to dramatically lose its quality and fall in price. Every month, a delay in repairs is another blow to the car owner's wallet.
In order to speed up the process of paying off the obligations of the "Dominant" MTIBU, a revised version of the law on compulsory insurance was presented to the Verkhovna Rada. The project includes the following changes:
- simplification of the procedure for registration of insurance claims in accordance with the concluded contract;
- simplification of the process of declaring an insurance company insolvent;
- simplification of the procedure for obtaining insurance compensation.
Unfortunately, the process of considering the proposed amendments to the law is proceeding extremely slowly.
Legal advice
Lawyers point out that the bankruptcy process of an insurer company is distinguished by the following important points:
- when the insurer is declared bankrupt, all contracts with it are considered automatically terminated;
- clients of the company can receive a certain percentage of the amount already paid under the insurance contract;
- if the insured event occurred before the company was declared bankrupt, the damage due to it must be reimbursed to the insured person.
After the insurer company is officially declared bankrupt, new contracts with it are no longer concluded, and existing contracts within six months can be transferred to another company.
If the accident happened after the company was declared bankrupt, no one will compensate for the damage.
Problems of organizing the work of insurance companies
In addition to economic troubles with Ukrainian insurers, a number of other factors also affect the reluctance of car owners to purchase insurance policies.
For example, not so long ago, the security services of several Ukrainian insurers identified a group that was engaged in fraudulent operations in a number of insurance companies over the past several years.
Fraudsters, taking advantage of the collusion with the companies' officials and experts, were engaged in registration of forged documents on road accidents and filing fictitious claims for the payment of insurance.
Not everything goes smoothly in the work of the insurance companies themselves. Unwillingness to insure cars over 10 years old, refusal to conclude an insurance contract for elderly and novice drivers - all this has created a stable idea among Ukrainian car owners about the insurance company as a useless organization to which you have to deposit funds, and in the event of an accident, it is difficult to wait for help from insurers. if not possible at all.
All this systematically creates a stable attitude among drivers towards insurers and their activities, and a sharp drop in demand for insurance policies is an unequivocal evidence of this attitude.
How to change the situation
In order for the mass refusal of insurance not to acquire an avalanche-like scale, it is obvious that increasing the size of the fine for the lack of an insurance policy is not enough. The state needs to attend to raising citizens' confidence in insurance companies.
For this, a timely financial and economic audit of operating insurance companies and constant control over their activities can play an important role in order to timely prevent situations in which the clients of the notorious "Dominanta" find themselves.
Regulation of the pricing policy of insurers and laws ensuring the timely fulfillment of insurance obligations should also play a positive role in the process of normalizing the situation with insurance.
Any service will be in demand if it works for mutual benefit. Provision of motor vehicle insurance services is no exception. If suddenly a massive rejection of a service begins to occur, even regardless of the fact that it is actively promoted by state structures, this means only one thing: it is necessary to revise the mechanisms of its operation and understand the causes of the problem.
Correct and timely establishment of the normal functioning of the car insurance system is the only way to normalize the situation.
