Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 31
By Anvar Mammadov – Trend:
Azerbaijan’s Ateshgah insurance company does not exclude the possibility of insurance of the agricultural sector, chairman of the company’s board Azer Aliyev said in an interview with Trend.
He added that at present, that product is not of special interest for the company.
"The company is able to insure the participants of the country’s agricultural market, but the company is not interested in that because the volume in this sector does not completely meet our expectations," Aliyev said. “On the other hand, the company has not had a sufficient number of specialists for a long time to assess the risk component.”
“It is hard to say what has changed in the last few years,” he said. “I have recently reviewed sales and have not seen insurance of the agricultural sector in the portfolio, which means that the company is not interested in this type of insurance. The state policy is aimed at increasing production in the agricultural sector and, probably, after a while we will start working in this direction."
Currently, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), together with Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Agriculture and Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FIMSA), is working on a project to introduce an agricultural insurance system in the country.
“At the moment, we are working to improve the legislation in this sphere,” Aliya Azimova, head of IFC Baku office, told Trend earlier. “Negotiations are also underway to choose an institution that will oversee the sphere of agricultural insurance.”
She added that most likely, the institution will be created on the basis of an insurance pool and will operate as a fund, which will include insurance companies operating in Azerbaijan [there are 22 of them in the country].
The fund, along with overseeing this sphere, will also develop new insurance services, she noted.
“We are also collecting information for assessment of risks in the sphere of agricultural insurance in order to prepare first insurance services by 2018,” Azimova added.
Azimova said that the Azerbaijani government is inclined to use the Turkish model of agricultural insurance, which is called TARSIM.
“As part of the work on the project, the IFC is looking for the most appropriate options to introduce this model in Azerbaijan,” she noted.
Ateshgah insurance company was established in 1996 and the license for activity was granted in 1997. As of late 2016, the company’s share capital was over 5 million manats.
The company’s assets amounted to 41.55 million manats, liabilities - 26.65 million manats in early 2017. The company completed 2016 with a profit worth 356,720 manats.
The company’s premiums amounted to 27.86 million manats and payment of claims - 11.66 million manats in January-September 2017.