During a meeting held yesterday in Asharqia Chamber
Chairman of the insurance awareness and training and media spokesman for the insurance companies Adel Bin Abdulaziz Al Essa said that the insurance market in the Kingdom suffers from several things, the most important are the variation of legislator authorities and the widening of the circle of the negative awareness and fraud, in addition to that the lack of databases of the detailed informations that led to increase the loss of companies in the market .
In a meeting with the Insurance Committee in the Chamber and a number of businessmen and interested figures on Sunday (15 / May / 2016) headed by the Chairman of the Insurance Committee in the Chamber Salah Mohammed Al Jabr, Al Essa said, that the insurance market includes about 35 insurance companies, of which only two companies are specialized in the medical insurance, and one company in reinsurance, and 32 mixed company that sell more than one product, at the same time there are 199 supportive companies of which 80 of them as broker and 84 as an agent, even though, the compulsory insurance is excluded to only two producers (the medical and vehicles)
He mentioned that these companies do not deal with the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency only, but will deal with the Health Insurance Council, the Ministry of Labor, the departments of traffic, the Capital Market Authority, and the secretariats and so on, they may get a permission from the Monetary Agency but this does not mean that the procedures had finished,. Stressing the presence of a major development in the process, especially after the confirmation of the electronic statements in a number of government departments such as traffic and civil defense.
Al Essa pointed to Najm company for Insurance Services as one of the supportive companies in the vehicle insurance, and said that it is a nonprofit company, owned by all insurance companies working in the field of vehicles, with a number of (29 companies), with an equal capital that employs around 1,500 employees, the Saudization ratio is up to 93% saying that the idea of creating Najm receives welcoming in a number of neighboring Arab countries, and they are working for applying it.
He added that the market is growing year after year at an annual rate of about 20% in the previous years, although most of it are the producers of(vehicles and medical), that take control of 81% of the market, yet still the spending of the average person on insurance is humble and limited, and prices still did not reach the full, thus, you can find the losses high in the market as the number of losing companies is up to 14 companies at the end of 2015, some of them were profitable in the year before.
He pointed that there is a negative conscious that dominates the insurance domain, in the sense that some people in a time were not conscious of their insurance rights , but after the progress in the market they have enough awareness, that enabled them to claim often and fraud insurance companies, making the presence of additional laws a must to protect companies, and the market.
He said that the market needs to a specialized center that provides detailed informations about the market, this market despite the enormity and increasing in the number of companies working in it, it suffers from a lack of detailed and analytical databases.
He warned of the danger of the growing phenomenon of traffic accidents, saying that the rate of the dead in traffic accidents as the World Health Organization has mentioned is up to more than 8000 deaths per year, as expected according to Najm statistics ,that the country is going to witness s in the year 3000 accident per day, which means an accident every 30 seconds, and 125 accident per hour.
Al Essa expressed his hope that the market exceeds all these problems by spreading the compulsory insurance to include the rest of the insurance products, and that we reach a solution to the variation of legislation authorities for the insurance, to improve the situation the insurance market .
