There was a 4-fold increase in demand in TCIP and housing insurance

It has been 1 month since the earthquake disasters, which were experienced in Kahramanmaraş and had devastating effects in 11 provinces in total. Evaluating the earthquakes from the perspective of insurance, Aksigorta General Manager Uğur Gülen said, “We experienced a great disaster. However, this region is not a region where penetration is low in terms of insurance. Especially in industrial and industrial areas, insurance coverage is quite high, with a rate of 80-90 percent.

Individual insurance is of course slightly lower; I can say that it is the average of Turkey. There are over 5 million policies. We know that 3.5-4 million of them come from life insurance. Penetration in DASK product is around 50 percent and home insurance is around 20 percent. There are nearly 500 thousand policies in motor insurance, making up 7-8 percent of Turkey.

The earthquakes took place in an area that accounts for 10 percent of GDP. I would say 10% of the economy. It has affected Gaziantep, Kahramanmaraş, where the industry is highly developed, and Hatay, where SMEs are concentrated. We know that there is a loss of approximately 90 billion TL with the notifications received so far. Almost all of this damage has been reinsured. As the insurance industry, we gave a very good test. We protected both our customers and agents. We made the claims payments quickly and we will continue to pay these damages by prioritizing them. The development that pleases us to some extent at the moment is to see that our society has reached the awareness of insurance against another possible earthquake disaster,” he said.

Stating that they evaluated this increase in policies specifically for Aksigorta, Uğur Gülen said, “Although TCIP production is closed in the eastern regions, we see that the written production has increased 2-3 times compared to February of the previous year. Considering the expected Istanbul earthquake, I can say that there has been a 4-fold increase in this region compared to last year.

Again, with the effect of the Kahramanmaraş earthquake, the demand for TCIP and housing insurance increased up to 4 times in the Mediterranean region. A significant 63 percent of the total production comes from new policies. This shows that the awareness of securing itself against earthquakes as a society has increased 3-4 times compared to the previous years,” he said.

Housing insurance additional assurance to TCIP

Emphasizing that TCIP insurance is necessary but only for a certain amount, Gülen said: “In addition to the TCIP policy, the increase in housing insurance is one of the most important factors showing the increase in insurance awareness. It is very important to obtain housing insurance in order to provide full coverage for disasters. In addition to being an additional guarantee to TCIP, this policy is a product preferred by tenants to protect their belongings. Of course, we have a social concern after the disaster. As a result of this, it is possible to say that there is a very high demand for housing and TCIP insurances. As a society living in the earthquake zone, this level of awareness should continue all the time, not only after disasters,” he said.

DASK’s damage payment reached 3 billion TL

The damage payment made by the Natural Disaster Insurance Institution (DASK) after the earthquakes in Kahramanmaraş reached 3 billion TL.

According to the statement made by TCIP, the damage assessment processes and damage payments of the institution continue rapidly after the earthquakes that took place on 6 February.