Sberbank excluded from the list of accredited insurance companies admitted to insuring collaterals IC Soglasie, AIG and SO Surgutneftegaz. The last one returned to the list yesterday.
The companies were accredited under property insurance programs. Apart from housing mortgage borrowers The companies insured property and corporate clients, which the bank accepted as collateral. Excluded insurers also cooperated with borrowers' life and health insurance programs.
Sberbank did not comment on the reasons why the bank terminated the cooperation agreement with the insurers. According to the DP source, the bank stopped accepting policies from their clients using a simplified procedure from May 16, 2019.
Due to legal requirements, including consumer protection and antitrust laws, banks cannot refuse clients to accept policies from licensed insurers. Officially, instead of the so-called list of accredited banks, they publish lists of recommended companies or a list of organizations with which a cooperation agreement has been concluded.
Sberbank's list currently includes 20 insurers. The bank indicates that when accepting a policy from a non-accredited company, it must meet the requirements expressed in 20 points. It may take up to 30 business days for such a policy to be approved or rejected.
Sberbank has a subsidiary company - Sberbank Insurance. Its representative found it difficult to estimate how much the company’s share would increase after Sberbank reduced the list of accredited competing companies.
According to Sberbank Insurance, in 2018, residents of St. Petersburg concluded 1.1 million property insurance contracts. The volume of collected premiums exceeded 2.97 billion rubles. At the end of 2019, fees for this type are expected to increase by another 14%, to 3.4 billion rubles.
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The deal to sell IC Soglasie to Prokhorov to Russian Funds beneficiary Sergei Vasiliev will not take place - the Bank of Russia did not approve such a change of shareholder, Vedomosti was told by a financier who knew this from the regulator, and a person who learned this from the insurer and the Central Bank. The deal was launched by the first deputy chairman of the Central Bank, Sergei Shvetsov, one of them points out. The Central Bank, according to him, fears a further withdrawal of assets from the company, as happened after the purchase of Oranta by SG Kompanion (both companies had their license revoked).
Prokhorov has been negotiating the sale of “Consent” since at least the summer, participants in the negotiations said. The most obvious contender for purchasing the asset was the development company Ladya River, one of the founders of which is the beneficiary of the investment group, Sergei Vasiliev. At the end of November, Ladya River received approval of the transaction from the FAS. Vasiliev confirmed that he was negotiating the purchase of Soglasiya, and added that the deal may not be closed in 2015. He did not comment on the terms of the deal.
A person close to Rook River confirms that there will be no deal, but gives another reason: the parties “simply did not agree.” The Central Bank does not comment on specific transactions, the regulator’s press service indicated. Onexim declined to comment yesterday. A representative of Soglasiya stated that he denies the information. IC Soglasie is not for sale to anyone, Onexim CEO Dmitry Razumov said the day before. The group, as before, considers the company one of its strategic assets and is not considering offers to sell, he claims, noting that the shareholder is still ready to support financial condition"Consents." However, one of Prokhorov’s acquaintances knows that he is no longer as interested in the insurance market as before.
Costly “Consent”
Only in 2014–2015. Prokhorov invested about 14 billion rubles in Soglasie, a Onexim representative specified. The funds were also used to cover current losses. Now, according to the instructions of the Central Bank, the company must create additional reserves by April. Based on the results of the first half of the year, the company needed to additionally create about 7 billion rubles. reserves, said two people familiar with the company’s reporting.
It was not possible to contact Vasiliev on Monday. Vasiliev’s partner in the deal was considered a well-known manager at insurance market Victor Yun. Yun himself reported that he was only a consultant to Vasiliev. Yun founded the Standard Reserve insurance company in 1993. In 2012, the Russian Insurance Traditions Insurance Company, headed by Yun, announced self-liquidation and filed a petition for bankruptcy in court; later the company’s license was revoked, and the insurer was declared bankrupt.
Formally, the Central Bank has not yet been given the right to approve purchase and sale transactions of insurers, the Central Bank representative recalled. But any big deal requires the tacit approval of the regulator, explains a top manager of a large insurer.
Russian Funds have previously invested in small insurers: Solidarity for Life and Standard Reserve (in 2005, together with the international financial holding TBIH). Together with Yun in 2008, the group created the Genesis insurance holding, which included Russian Insurance Traditions, TIT, and Nakhodka Re.
Prokhorov does not give up his intention to sell the insurer and continues to search for investors, says one of Onexim’s counterparties. Prokhorov made a second offer to another contender, ex-governor of the Kaliningrad region Georgy Boos, who had previously considered the purchase of Consent, says a person close to Boos. But he, he said, “is interested in less problematic companies.”
Insurance Company Soglasie may be laying off employees and downsizing its business, sources tell Banki.ru. According to the portal’s interlocutors, the insurer may be sold to Rosgosstrakh.
One of the sources said that about 900 out of 1 thousand brokers and counterparties of Soglasiya stopped working with the company. A spokesman for the insurer confirmed that the company has revised the terms of work with brokers.
In addition, the interlocutor of Banki.ru reported that the management of the insurance organization, according to some information, has begun dismissing employees involved in retail sales and serving corporate clients. The insurer also stopped expanding corporate business. According to the source, in last years Mikhail Prokhorov (his Onexim group owns Soglasie) is unable to engage in the insurance business, so the only option is to sell the company with an additional payment to the buyer.
President of the Association for the Protection of Policyholders Nikolai Tyurnikov notes that Soglasie Insurance Company is “engaged in furious dumping on the market,” which causes great concern. The insurer's rates, he says, are two times lower than those of other insurance companies. “This raises suspicions that money is being collected, or there is not enough money, or the business plan is being adjusted. Adjusting a business plan is not designed to pay clients,” he argues.
A Banki.ru source in the insurance market reported that the Bank of Russia could already approve the deal to sell Soglasiya to Rosgosstrakh. He could not disclose the amount of the transaction. According to a representative of one of the federal insurers, some of the Soglasiya offices are moving to the offices of Rosgosstrakh.
The source believes that the Central Bank is not interested in Soglasiya leaving the market, since this would be a high-profile event and would cause discontent among citizens. “It’s easier for Mikhail Prokhorov to give the money and get rid of this company than to continue to incur losses. The Soglasie company is nothing normal at the moment,” he believes.
According to one of Banki.ru’s sources, Soglasie may repeat the fate of the St. Petersburg insurance company Russkiy Mir, which was integrated into Rosgosstrakh, and after a while lost its license. “Danil Khachaturov, who owns Rosgosstrakh, already has experience in taking over the Russkiy Mir company. The situation there was as follows: assets and clients were taken away, and the company quietly left the market. The same thing will happen with the Soglasie company so that there is no resonance. Offers to purchase “Consent” are unlikely to come to other players, because only Khachaturov has experience. No one needs a major fall of an insurer on the market today; everything should go quietly, civilly and politely,” the expert notes. According to another Banki.ru source in the insurance market, the Soglasiya shareholder poured into insurance organization about 4 billion rubles.
IC Soglasie did not confirm the information about the deal; an official representative of the Onexim group said: “We know nothing about this.”
Information about a possible deal between IC Soglasie and Rosgosstrakh appeared last year, but the parties did not confirm it then.
Let us recall that Soglasiya’s collections last year decreased by 19.6%, to 34.5 billion rubles. Payments decreased from 27.2 billion rubles to 26.1 billion. The company’s key types of insurance were motor hull insurance (the volume of collected premiums amounted to more than 17.8 billion rubles, or 51.8% of the total volume of premiums), OSAGO (6.4 billion, or 18.6%), VHI (2.85 billion, or 8.3%), property insurance for individuals and legal entities(2.6 billion, or 7.5%). The company concluded 3.6 million insurance contracts; a year earlier, the number of concluded contracts exceeded 4 million. At the end of the year, the company took ninth place in the ranking of insurers (in 2013 - fifth place).
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