Hungary: less than 20% of Hungarians have an accident insurance policy

18 July 2018 — Daniela GHETU
Only 10-20% have an accident insurance, while in many countries of the Western Europe accident insurance coverage among their population is of more than 80%, The Budapest Business Journal reports. The low penetration leaves about 8 million Hungarians uninsured for the accident risk.

In fact, by the end of 2017, the total number of accident insurance policies in force was of 611,828, according to the official statistical data provided by market authority, the Hungarian Central Bank. The number shows an about 1.5% decrease in the total volume of valid contracts in force at year end as compared with the previous year, when there were over 620 thousand active policies. In addition to this number, there are the additional accident insurance clauses included in housing, motor vehicle insurance contracts.

According to a recent press release of insurer UNION, member of the VIG Group, "homeland is the island of security for the majority, but accident insurance statistics show that most of the accidents occur in households: the vast majority of UNION Insurance's accident insurance indemnities have been paid in such cases over the past year. Based on the data of the Central Statistical Office, while in the traffic accidents were lost 625 lives in 2017, household casualties claimed more than 1,700 people in Hungary. More than half of the accidents occurring at home are caused by falling, burns or sharp injuries."

According to UNION, people should take under consideration that the coverage provided by the accident insurance products is very large, both in terms of risks and geographically. In the insurers' view, "an appropriate protection can be considered when the death or invalidity allowance reaches HUF 10 million (~EUR 32,000). Such protection can be obtained individually even for a monthly fee of HUF 2,000, which is less than EUR 7/month. Usually, says the insurer, the supplementary accident coverage associated with different policies (housing or motor vehicle insurance etc.) don't provide for such a level of the allowance.

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