RUSSIA: the share of electronic insurance contracts decreased from 40% to 10%

20 October 2021 —
During the lockdown in the first half of 2020, about 40% of insurance contracts were concluded online. However, the fear of fraud and losses again led to a decrease in the share of electronic contracts below 10%, said Vladimir CHISTYUKHIN, Deputy Chairman of the Bank of Russia, in an interview with ASN.

A significant jump in distance sales in insurance occurred in the first half of 2020 (to about 40%), but after the lockdown there was a sharp decline, as noted by Vladimir CHISTYUKHIN. "As far as I understand, during the pandemic period, maintaining the premium volume level came to the fore. The issues of fraud and unprofitability were somewhat pushed aside. Even those companies that were very skeptic at the end of 2019, were forced to significantly improve their automated systems, improve the quality of websites in order to sell at least something remotely", explained Vladimir CHISTYUKHIN. After the lockdown, the issue of unprofitability, fraud, abuse by various groups of criminals again came to the fore and "the volume of distance sales fell sharply below 10%", said the Deputy Chairman of the Bank of Russia.

Besides, when it comes to complex financial products, consumers are not ready to perceive them by just reading offers on the Internet. "They need it to be explained, demonstrated with examples, comparisons, in a normal dialogue. In this sense, I think that we have not yet substantially overcome this gap between human contact and the Internet", explained Vladimir CHISTYUKHIN.



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