Insurance market of Ukraine may shrink by 40-60% this year

A blitz interview with Director General of the Insurance Business Association Viacheslav Cherniakhovsky

- The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) currently does not publish information about the work of insurance companies as well as makes no forecasts about the future of the market. What is your assessment of the situation in general?

- Experts say Ukraine's GDP has declined from 30% to 50%. Hence, the insurance market will drop even lower, to 40-60% as compared to 2021, adjusted for inflation.

By the end of the year, if the war situation does not get worse, we might expect some recovery in the market, first of all, as regards mandatory types of insurance. In particular, we are already observing a more than a double growth in the number of Green Card contracts due to the fact that thousands of refugees flee abroad on their own cars.

The members of our Association have started supplementing various standard insurance contracts with clauses on the coverage of war risks, both primary and secondary. This should contribute to retention of customers for whom the coverage of such risks is very important today.

- How can you describe the situation with the assets and solvency of Ukrainian insurers?

- The main asset in insurance are people. Unfortunately, some companies in the eastern regions have faced numerous cases when employees remained in the temporarily occupied territory, suffered from shelling or were drafted into the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), serve in territorial defense units or were evacuated, including abroad, which greatly complicates the work. A part of material assets of many insurance companies, including their regional offices, were affected by the war. They [the offices] were destroyed or remained in the