To inquire about all terms of rating procedure, please
contact:
Yana Melnik (Acting Director of Department)
YMelnik@credit-rating.com.ua
A major condition for development of the insurance sector is the customer’s confidence. To achieve it the market must be transparent, having well-organized legislative framework and efficient tools for control over its participants. Today the information mirroring performance of insurance companies in Ukraine’s market remains insufficient, with legislative framework and regulatory environment needing further enhancements.
Under present circumstances an ordinary person faces difficulties when sorting out a vast number of offers and searching the most appropriate one. In order to meet market demands Credit-Rating has launched its new product – an insurer strength rating. This type of rating has been specially developed for consumers of insurance services so that they have more information about reliability of insurers.
In Credit-Rating’s view this product will meet demand since in today’s environment the customer may often use insurer’s advertisements only while lacking information from unbiased sources. This is obviously insufficient, since it is greatly important to have information on reliability of insurers from independent experts – especially under crisis conditions.
The insurer strength rating exhibits the agency’s opinion regarding capability and willingness of an insurance company, which operates in Ukraine, to meet its commitments on repayment of insurance reimbursements/cumulated insurance amounts in a timely and full manner. While conducting a rating procedure the agency considers company’s policy regarding repayments of reimbursements to individuals and company’s loyalty towards its customers more thoroughly than while assigning a credit rating.
The insurer strength rating is assigned pursuant to a specially developed scale. The main user of this rating is a customer, that is why the scale is simple and easy to understand. While assigning an insurer strength rating we make comparisons with Ukraine’s insurance companies only, leaving beyond consideration of other economic entities.
The rating enables potential customers of insurance companies to make selection of the most reliable companies and decide on purchasing services in the company or prolongation of existing agreement.
Apart from the criteria given below, additional specific factors intrinsic to certain companies may be taken into consideration by the agency.
The major criteria for assigning an insurer strength rating are the following:
Creditworthiness
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Debt burden
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Capital adequacy (equity versus obligations)
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Quick and current liquidity
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Quick and current solvency (ratio of premiums earned to amount of compensations and other expenses)
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Backing from shareholders or associates
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Probability of funds withdrawal to associates
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Impact on the market (monopoly, impact on price level etc.)
Performance efficiency
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Profit from core business
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Return on equity
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Profitability of insuring
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Return on investments
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Ratio reflecting independence from reinsurance (gross premiums less reinsurance)
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Changes in gross insurance payments
Risk management
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Net premiums and reimbursements by insurance products
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Amount and quality of reserves
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Share of reinsuring in insurance reserves
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Balance and quality of portfolio of outgoing reinsurance
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The quality of insurance products in terms of mitigation of risks and correspondence of priorities set with the market trends
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Investment policy (diversification, portion of liquid assets in investment portfolio)
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Diversification of number of customers and of amount of premiums earned by sales channels, namely bank channel, agent channel, branch channel, sales channel via legal entities, which are not banks (car sales centres, trade centres etc.)
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Availability of strategic partners
Loyalty towards customers and reputation
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Portion of payments (ratio of the number of claims to the number of reimbursements)
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Terms of considering claims and period between decision on the reimbursement and execution of the reimbursement (information obtained from the company and external sources)
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Customer-orientation and transparency of documentation and payment procedures (analysis of model agreements, insurance rules, procedures to be followed by the customers in order to obtain reimbursements, set of documents to obtain reimbursements etc.)
