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1.3 The role of insurance in modern society
Currently, the importance of insurance arises due to the following circumstances:
Frequency and severity natural Disasters and other adverse events are objectively increasing;
New, complex risks are generated scientific and technical progress– from explosions and fires when introducing new technologies to risks associated with new information technology, genetics, etc. It is important to note that these are new risks, the management experience of which has not been developed;
The development of the economy leads to the complication of economic relations, at the same time it is known that the more complex the system, the easier it is to bring it out of equilibrium. The breakdown of one economic connection (short delivery of products due to a fire at the supplier) in some cases puts the entire chain of producers and consumers in critical conditions. In addition, economic development gives rise to a lot of new business risks, especially in the field of financial risk (stock exchange, banking);
For all countries with developed economies, the problem of population aging is common, which exacerbates the need for human protection (providing him with the necessary medical care and ensuring decent income in old age).
In such conditions, the protection of society cannot be ensured without the help of insurance. These problems are also relevant for Russia. Moreover, in Russia the objective need for insurance is increased for the following reasons:
The ability of the state and society to provide assistance and compensation for damage in the event of adverse events is limited due to lack of resources;
The production assets of most enterprises have high percent wear, therefore the exposure to various risks is increased;
Many industries use outdated technologies that pose a danger to production participants and environment;
There is a certain socio-economic instability of society.
With the help of insurance, the risk is transferred to a professional - an insurance organization that has appropriate specialists in working with risk. By compensating for damage, insurance ensures the continuity of economic activity of market economy entities and thereby contributes to the stability of the national economy. Insurance protection of a business entity, the national economy and specific members of society is certainly the main task of insurance.
The impact of insurance on the economy and society does not end there:
During the insurance process, small, scattered contributions from policyholders are accumulated by the insurer and converted into investment capital;
Insurance as a branch of the economy is a labor market;
Insurance makes a serious contribution to ensuring effective demand in the country, compensating the policyholder for losses (instead of a broken car, a new one is bought, a new one is built on the site of a destroyed factory) and paying for the work of specialists involved in insurance;
Insurance stimulates scientific and technological progress, providing protection for venture, knowledge-intensive, and new industries. Not every entrepreneur would take the risk of investing in such projects without insurance protection;
The successful activities of insurers contribute to an increase in the country’s budget both through tax revenues from the insurance company itself, its employees, and tax revenues from policyholders, economic activity which did not cease due to any unforeseen events, but received support in the form of an insurance payment;
The insurance industry is one of the largest owners of information. Insurance companies have accumulated unique statistical data on accidents, catastrophes, and natural disasters. In addition, insurers' databases include information about the risks of their clients - both legal and individuals. Thus, insurance creates unique Information Systems, including at the international level.
Special research in the field of psychology has shown that in a country in which entrepreneurs and the population have insurance policies“for all occasions”, social tension in society is significantly reduced.
The role of insurance is so important that insurance is considered a strategic sector of the economy.
1.4 Insurance market Russian Federation
The insurance market is a set of socio-economic relations regarding the purchase and sale of a specific product - insurance service, in the process of which the insurance interest of citizens and legal entities is realized, the need for insurance protection of their property interests is satisfied.
From an organizational and technical point of view, the insurance market is an institution or mechanism that brings together buyers (policyholders) and sellers (insurers) of a particular type of service directly or through intermediaries (insurance agents and insurance brokers). List of participants insurance market presented in table 1.
Table 1 - Composition of insurance market participants
| Buyers (policyholders) | Intermediaries and other market participants | Sellers (insurers, reinsurers) |
| Trading, manufacturing military, agricultural military, transport- enterprises; public, government organizations and academic cutting; citizens and their associations. | Agents, brokers, consultants ltants, appraisers, ac- tuaries, auditors; soy- insurance companies and associations brokers, brokers, agents tov, etc. | Insurance companies, reinsurance companies companies and societies, countries business companies are obliged to body medical insurance, insurance pools. |
As a result of the interaction of these subjects, demand, supply and price for the insurance service are formed, exchange is ensured necessary information, registration of insurance documentation (contracts, policies, etc.), mutual payments are made. Geographically, the insurance process can take place at the location of the insurance object, place of residence or work of an individual, at the office of an enterprise or insurance company, as well as using modern technologies, including trading via the Internet, without direct contact between representatives of the parties.
Insurance risks can be classified by types and industries of insurance (personal insurance market, marine insurance market, etc.); insurance objects and risks (fire insurance market, air transport insurance market, etc.); scale and coverage area (local, national, regional, international), etc.
In accordance with the Law of the Russian Federation “On the organization of insurance business in the Russian Federation,” the activities of Russian insurers are permitted only in the status of a legal entity, in any provided for by law organizational and legal form, subject to obtaining a license to carry out insurance activities in established by law ok.
After the introduction of the first part of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, adopted on October 21, 1994, the creation of insurance organizations is possible in the following forms: business partnerships and societies; production cooperatives; state and unitary municipal enterprises; non-profit organizations.
Business partnerships are represented to a very small extent in insurance. These include the forms of general partnership and limited partnership. Business partnerships and societies have certain common features and significant differences. The common thing is that they are all commercial organizations with authorized capital divided into shares of the founders. The main difference between them is the nature of the property liability of the founders for the results of the financial and economic activities of organizations. In business partnerships it is of an unlimited solidarity nature. In business societies there is limited liability, in which everyone risks only the funds invested in the enterprise.
Associations of insurers are created on a voluntary basis to coordinate their activities, protect the interests of their members and implement their programs. These associations (unions, associations, etc.) do not have the right to directly engage in business activities.
Given the relatively small volume of the insurance market, the state has the ability to establish comprehensive supervision over its participants. As the scale of the insurance market increases, the possibilities of ensuring rules of civilized behavior for its participants by means of state regulation are narrowed. There is a need to transfer a part control functions to the level of self-regulatory organizations uniting professional participants in the insurance market. Moreover, the interests of insurance companies are increasingly merging with the interests of the state, since unfair competition of individual insurers harms all participants in the insurance market, reducing trust in insurance and insurers in general.
One of the forms of association of insurers is an insurance pool; it is a form of temporary association of independent companies to solve certain special problems and is created on the basis of a voluntary agreement between participants taking on joint obligations on the subject of the agreement. The creation of insurance pools pursues the following goals: to overcome the insufficient financial capacity of individual insurers; guarantees of insurance payments to clients; the possibility of accepting large risks for insurance, the sole bearing of which is beyond the power of the largest insurance companies.
Insurance pools cover aviation risks, environmental pollution risks, nuclear energy risks and civil liability drug manufacturers, construction organizations, etc. Participation in a pool is often one of the conditions for insurance companies to be allowed to insure large and dangerous risks.
Intermediaries in the insurance industry are insurance agents and insurance brokers. What makes this kind of professional services especially important for the insurance market is the presence of a large number of potential policyholders who do not have sufficient skills, habits and knowledge to independently navigate the insurance market.
Insurance agent– an individual or legal entity acting on behalf of and on behalf of an insurance company and carrying out in its interests, within the framework of the powers granted, the conclusion of insurance contracts, receipt of insurance payments, as well as other operations to service the insurance contract.
An insurance agent sells insurance services in at least one of two forms: as an independent agent (representing at least two Insurance companies and provides the client with services for market research, selection of the most suitable insurance conditions and favorable price providing the best insurance protection) or as an agent working only on behalf of one company and selling only its policies.
An insurance agent usually performs his functions in accordance with the insurer's power of attorney or on the basis of an agency agreement concluded between him and the insurance company.
As insurance brokers Both legal entities and individuals can also act, but a certain system of registration is provided for them as entrepreneurs carrying out insurance intermediary activities. Insurance brokers act on their own behalf based on instructions from the policyholder or insurer. When registering as an entrepreneur at his location, the insurance broker is required to submit to the insurance supervisory authority a notice of intention to carry out insurance activities 10 days before the start of this activity.
Self-test questions:
1.What are the reasons for the growing need for insurance in modern conditions?
2. What is insurance, what functions does it perform?
3. Give a description current state Russian insurance market?
4. Who are the participants in the insurance market?
5. What is an insurance pool?
6. What are the features of the activities of insurance agents and brokers?
7. Which document marked the beginning of the demonopolization of the insurance business in Russia?
8. What characterizes the development of insurance in the USSR?
9. What is the insurance market?
10. When was the Law of the Russian Federation “On Insurance in the Russian Federation” adopted?
What is insurance? Insurance is a relationship to protect the property interests of individuals and legal entities upon the occurrence of certain events (insured events) at the expense of funds formed from paid or insurance premiums (insurance premiums). Today, insurance is provided only for events about which it is impossible to know in advance whether they will happen or not.
Functions and role of insurance as economic category Four functions of insurance according to Yu. A. Spletukhov and E. F. Dyuzhikov: loss compensation function, social function, investment precautionary function. (some authors also highlight control and credit functions)
The role of insurance in regulating socio-economic relations of the Russian Federation Economic and social relations in society as a whole, within an individual economic entity or citizen and his family, they face risks of varying degrees and breadth of impact, sources and destructiveness. The listed criteria predetermine the use various forms carrying out insurance. The combination of various forms of insurance for the purpose of risk management at the macro- and microeconomic levels ensures integrity national system insurance.
The role of insurance in the formation investment capital in the Russian Federation In the global economy, insurance companies are among the largest collective investors and take an active investment position. If the dynamics of the insurance market are generally positive, then insurers become a source of long-term resources. By Russian legislation Insurers can place their own funds and insurance reserves. The share of borrowed funds largely prevails over their own and is regulated by the Rules for the placement of insurance reserve funds by insurers. Assets accepted to cover insurance reserves must satisfy the conditions of diversification, liquidity, repayment, and only lastly (in the opinion of the regulator) profitability. Insurance reserves must be sufficient to fulfill obligations under insurance, coinsurance, and reinsurance contracts. Therefore, the legislator has established strict requirements for their composition and structure. Due to the recognition of insurance companies as qualified investors, new opportunities open up for them. Despite the fact that the composition of assets provided for covering insurance reserves includes instruments that are not available, for example, to non-state pension funds, it needs to be expanded. First of all, this concerns the inclusion of closed-end mutual funds in the list of assets investment funds. The design of a closed-end mutual investment fund will allow for profitable investment indirectly in: · real estate; · venture projects; · real sector economics; · other assets.
The role of insurance in the development of the national economy of the Russian Federation In the market economy of the Russian Federation at the stage of its formation, insurance acts, on the one hand, as a means of protecting business and people’s well-being, and on the other, as an income-generating activity. The sources of profit of an insurance organization are income from insurance activities, from investments temporarily free funds into objects of production and non-production spheres of activity, shares of enterprises, bank deposits, securities, etc. Insurance serves important factor stimulating production activity and ensuring healthy image life, creates new incentives for the growth of labor productivity in accordance with personal contribution to production and ensuring one’s own well-being.
Assessment of the development of the modern insurance market in the Russian Federation The first half of 2008 in the Russian insurance market - trends: equalization of tariffs and a decrease in the growth rate of insurance associated with credit products. What comes first is not market share, but the sustainability and profitability of the business. Most insurance companies have begun an internal transformation - a transition from targets aimed at capturing the largest possible market share at any cost, to a focus on other results. The main trend of the year before last is that many insurance companies are choosing not in favor of “tariff wars” and dumping operations, but in favor of the reliability of the company, its reserves, and the stability of the insurance portfolio. Another trend is the pursuit of a customer-oriented policy.
References 1. Ageev N. R. Insurance: theory, practice and foreign experience. - M.: Yunost, 2008. 2. Aleksandrov A. A. Insurance. - M.: “Prior”, 2008. 3. Vobly K.G. Fundamentals of insurance savings. - M. : - ANKIL, 2002. - 228 p. 4. Yakovleva T. A., Shevchenko O. Yu. Insurance. – M.: Economist, 2004. – P. 12. 5. Ageev N. R. Insurance: theory, practice and foreign experience. - M.: Yunost, 2008. – P. 12. 6. Aleksandrov A. A. Insurance. - M.: “Prior”, 2008. – P. 23. 7. Spletukhov Yu. A., Dyuzhikov E. F. Insurance. – M.: INFRA-M, 2006. – P. 19. 8. Yakovleva T. A., Shevchenko O. Yu. Insurance. – M.: Economist, 2004. – P. 14. 9. Vobly K. G. Fundamentals of economics in insurance. - M. : - ANKIL, 2002. – P. 24. 10. Zhuravlev Yu. N. Dictionary-reference book of terms for insurance and reinsurance (second edition). - M.: ANKIL, 2007. – P. 131. 11. Samiev P., Yanin A. New course of the insurance market // Expert. – 2008. - No. 41. - http: //www. expert. ru/printissues/expert/2008/41/novuy_kurs/.
The activities of insurance organizations at the stage of identifying risks are associated primarily with the need to determine the types of insurance that they can carry out, as well as the development of conditions for carrying out each of these types. Such work requires studying the risks threatening potential clients of the insurer and identifying those objects that may be at risk if these risks materialize. Such activities can be called identifying risks at the macro level, i.e. on the scale of the entire territory in which insurance is supposed to be carried out.
When concluding separate insurance contracts insurance organizations and intermediaries are already forced to study the risks that a specific potential client may suffer from. Taking this into account, each of them is invited to conclude insurance contracts that are relevant to them on appropriate terms. Such an activity can already be called identifying risks at the micro level, i.e. on the scale of life and activity of an individual, family or organization.
When calculating the rates of premiums to be paid, insurance organizations and other parties involved in this process carry out a risk assessment, since these calculations are associated with determining both the probability of the occurrence of events for which insurance is carried out, and the amount of possible losses from the occurrence of these events. At the same time, as well as at the stage of identifying risks, their assessment is carried out both at the macro level (when calculating rates in general for the type of insurance) and at the micro level (when specific values of rates under the insurance contract are determined).
In some cases, such activities of insurance organizations in themselves can bring great benefit to clients, regardless of whether an insurance contract will be concluded in the future and payments will be made. For example, as a result of a medical examination before concluding insurance contracts, you can learn about the state of your health, checking the creditworthiness of counterparties before concluding credit insurance contracts can help identify unreliable partners, studying the legal purity of real estate before concluding title insurance contracts can protect against the acquisition of a dubious object, etc. .P.
The role of insurance in risk control very diverse.
When concluding insurance contracts, insurance organizations may put forward requirements aimed at reducing the level of risk in relation to those objects that are supposed to be insured. At the same time, fulfillment of such requirements may be either a general condition for concluding a contract, or at least allow concluding a contract for more preferential terms(for a smaller amount of contributions, with a wider range of obligations of the insurance organization, for higher amounts, etc.). Thus, citizens and organizations are forced to take measures aimed at reducing the level of risk.
The above-mentioned role of insurance can manifest itself especially clearly when a particular person, for some reason (the effect of regulations, contract requirements, conditions for participation in competitions and tenders, the need to improve his reputation, etc.) needs to have an insurance contract. In these cases, insurance organizations can perform the functions of a kind of controller over the state of affairs of their potential clients, checking their activities before concluding an insurance contract. The consent of the insurance organization to conclude an insurance contract after such an inspection may be for partners or regulatory authorities certain evidence that this person trustworthy. Such relationships are based on the fact that an insurance company can afford to conclude an insurance contract only when it is confident that the level of insurance risk under the contract does not exceed a certain limit, and this, in turn, is a guarantee of the quality of its verification of the potential client’s activities . A typical example here is the practice of insuring bank risks: on the one hand, contracts for such insurance are concluded only after a thorough check of the bank’s work, and on the other hand, the presence of insurance by the bank is one of the conditions for the bank to receive the appropriate rating, as well as certain evidence of its reliability.
Risk control during the validity period of insurance contracts is expressed primarily in the fact that its terms may provide for the obligation of the person whose risks are insured to comply with generally accepted norms and rules designed to reduce the likelihood of insured event and the extent of losses from it. Typically, in insurance practice, this requirement means that the person must act as he would have acted if the insurance contract had not been concluded (for example, when insuring property, this requirement may be expressed in the need to comply with safety requirements, fire safety, rules for storing property, etc.).
Insurance organizations, in turn, can monitor whether the level of risk under the concluded contract has increased. This control can be exercised by requiring reporting of circumstances that increase the level of insured risk; introducing into the terms of contracts the right of the insurance organization to check the condition of the insured objects itself and in other ways.
Finally, the stimulation of appropriate actions by insurance participants related to risk control is facilitated by certain rights of the insurance organization provided, as a rule, by the terms of the contracts in the event of an increase in the level of risk. Such rights, in particular, may be: a requirement from insurance participants to eliminate identified deficiencies that contribute to an increase in the level of risk; changing the terms of insurance contracts and the amount of contributions; termination of the insurance contract, refusal in appropriate cases of payments, etc.
The role of insurance in carrying out measures aimed at reducing losses from adverse events already occurring is manifested primarily in forcing insurance participants to implement such measures. Specifically, this is implemented as follows:
a) by establishing the obligation to implement measures aimed at reducing the amount of losses;
b) granting the insurance organization the right to give insurance participants instructions on how they should carry out repressive measures;
c) exemption of the insurance organization from the obligation to compensate for losses arising as a result of deliberate failure to take such measures that could well have been taken to reduce the amount of losses.
In some cases, insurance organizations themselves are directly involved in efforts to reduce losses. Examples include the evacuation of damaged cars by insurance organizations, their participation in rescuing insured cargo, the activities of service providers when insuring people traveling abroad, etc.
At the same time, insurance participants are encouraged to take measures to reduce losses. This is achieved, in particular, by reimbursing them for the costs they incurred in carrying out the above actions. In addition, there are special types insurance that provides exclusively compensation for costs caused by their desire to minimize losses in the event of an adverse event. An example is insurance of additional costs associated with damage to electronic equipment, the terms of which provide compensation for the cost of renting electronic equipment in the event of failure of the insured.
However, the main role of insurance appears at the stage of liquidation of the consequences of adverse events. It is for the implementation of insurance protection at this stage that insurance is carried out, while its role in the previous stages of insurance protection is additional, caused by the need to most effectively fulfill the main task - to help insurance participants after the occurrence of an adverse event. Such assistance can be provided in several directions.
The first and most important of them is the payment of monetary amounts for the consequences of an adverse event. Thus, insurance is one of the most important sources of financing risks at the stage of eliminating the consequences of random unforeseen events. At the same time, payments from insurance organizations for the consequences of the most devastating disasters reach huge amounts. For example, the liabilities of insurance organizations for the consequences of the World Trade Center explosions in New York on September 11, 2001 amounted to about $40 billion, for the consequences of hurricanes in the United States in 2005 - more than $60 billion.
The compensation received by enterprises and organizations to compensate for their losses allows them to restore lost and damaged property, overcome financial difficulties, which enables them to continue their operation and development, and ultimately contributes to the economic growth of the country as a whole.
Insurance is also widely used to solve social problems society. Thus, insurance organizations make payments for lost or damaged property of citizens, when they lose their ability to work as a result of accidents, illnesses, reaching old age, in cases of death of loved ones, and finance the treatment and rehabilitation of victims. All this helps the population maintain the level of material wealth they have achieved. Thus, insurance helps to stabilize the standard of living of citizens, while simultaneously reducing part of the financial burden on the state associated with the implementation of social payments.
The role of insurance is especially significant in the case of compensation for large losses. Using current cash flow and other non-special sources, as well as decentralized insurance funds, to eliminate such losses is, as a rule, unrealistic and ineffective. You can count on receiving funds from state insurance funds only in a limited number of cases. All this creates the preconditions for the widespread use of insurance. It is precisely when it turns out to be unrealistic or at least difficult for the injured subject to get out of the situation alone, since the amount of damage is too great, and he cannot count on state help, he has no other choice but to resort to the collective method of mutual assistance, which is insurance. This method is just good because it allows you to accumulate funds in such large volumes that they are enough to eliminate the largest losses.
It is important to emphasize that the provision of assistance through the insurance mechanism often occurs at the most critical moment in the life or activity of the person who has suffered losses, when the problem of the need for Money Oh.
In this regard, we note that often, to find out whether the insurance turned out to be really profitable, they resort to simple arithmetic calculations, adding up the amount of contributions paid during participation in it and the amount of payments received during this period. If the first amount turns out to be greater than the second, then it is concluded that part of the money was spent in vain. This, however, does not take into account the fact that the payment, quite possibly, was made when the injured person needed it more than ever, because in its absence he could find himself in a hopeless situation, for example, if it was necessary to pay for treatment, the absence of which was threatened life, or pay off creditors under the threat of declaring bankruptcy.
In some cases, insurance organizations provide assistance “in kind” instead of paying cash. This is expressed, for example, in organizing the provision of medical care, repairing insured vehicles and other damaged property, etc.
The third area of activity of insurance organizations when eliminating the consequences of adverse events is the provision of additional assistance. Examples of providing such assistance are legal protection of clients, provision of property to the injured person while the damaged property is repaired, payment of bail amounts to release property from seizure, etc.
Insurance can also increase the efficiency of financial planning and make it easier to calculate your future expenses associated with the need to compensate for losses resulting from the impact of unforeseen events. Such events tend to occur suddenly; most often it is impossible to foresee the extent of the losses that they may cause. Therefore, plan ahead financial plans and cost estimates of enterprises and organizations, the amounts in connection with the possibility of their occurrence are very problematic. At the same time, when using insurance, the enterprise’s expenses associated with the occurrence of insured risks are limited mainly to the payment of contributions, the amount of which is known in advance, and therefore it is not difficult to take them into account when financial planning for the future. future period. The same applies to those individuals who consider it necessary to plan their family budgets. Thus, the conclusion of insurance contracts can be considered as one of the elements of financial planning.
Insurance can also be considered as one of the ways to reduce psychological stress. Indeed, if a person is confident that financial consequences the occurrence of any unforeseen events will be compensated by the insurance company, he has less reason to worry about the fact that such events will happen to him. Thus, making contributions for an insurance contract can be considered, to a certain extent, as a payment for providing moral comfort. The fulfillment of this role by insurance is one of the reasons high level need for it, which occurs in the most developed countries, where the opportunity to live calmly, without shocks, is in itself perceived as one of the values for which it is worth paying money.
Insurance has significant opportunities in solving the problem associated with mobilizing savings for the development of the national economy. Unlike commercial banks, which specialize in raising funds for a short period, insurance organizations (primarily those carrying out life insurance operations) have funds received in the form of contributions for a long time (10 years or more). Therefore, in economically developed countries, insurance organizations are among the largest investors. A stable cash flow and long-term liabilities make insurance organizations an ideal source of “long-term money” for business and government. Thus, the invested assets of insurance companies in the most developed countries of the world in 2001 exceeded $7.5 trillion. At the same time, a significant part of the investments is directed to expanding production. By purchasing government securities, insurance organizations participate in the costs of infrastructure development, covering the budget deficit, etc.
In addition, the role of insurance in the investment process is also manifested in the fact that among the types of insurance there are those that are directly related to the insurance protection of investors from possible losses. This insurance allows investors to receive guarantees of the safety of their investments and thereby helps to increase investment volumes.
Insurance has a long history and belongs to such fundamental categories as money, credit, taxes. Today, insurance is a way to compensate for damage caused to the owner material assets as a result of natural disasters, accidents, fires, earthquakes, robberies, etc. These events disrupt the normal course of a person’s life and are distinguished by their suddenness and unforeseenness.
Naturally, any owner, any person is interested in ensuring the safety of his property, life, health and would like to be able to compensate for the damage caused in the event of an insured event. This interest is the subjective basis for the emergence of insurance.
The object of the work is phenomena and processes in modern society associated with risk.
The subject of the work is the features of insurance as an element of risk minimization.
The purpose of the work is to study the role of insurance in modern society.
Job objectives:
· Characteristics of the concept of the term “insurance” and “essence of insurance”;
· Outline of the history of insurance;
· Characteristics of the function and role of insurance as an economic category;
· Studying the role of insurance in regulating socio-economic relations of the Russian Federation;
· Characteristics of the role of insurance in the formation of investment capital in the Russian Federation;
· Studying the role of insurance in the development of the national economy of the Russian Federation;
· Assessment of the development of the modern insurance market in the Russian Federation;
· Characteristics of difficulties and prospects for the development of the insurance business in the Russian Federation;
· Proposal of measures to improve insurance in the Russian Federation.
The methodological basis for the study was the works of N.R. Ageeva, A.A. Alexandrova, K.G. Voblogo, S.K. Kazantseva, P. Samieva, A. Yanina, L.I. Reitman, V.V. Shakhova, T.A. Yakovleva, O.Yu. Shevchenko.
The empirical basis of the study was data on the state and prospects for the development of insurance in the Russian economy, in particular, the results of the development of the Russian insurance market for 2007, data presented in the study of P. Samiev and A. Yanin on the prospects for the development of the insurance market.
The work uses the works of domestic scientists and authors in the field of insurance: N.R. Ageeva, A.A. Alexandrova, K.G. Voblogo, Yu.N. Zhuravleva, S.K. Kazantseva, P. Samieva, A. Yanina, E.V. Kolomina, V.V. Shakhova, L.I. Reitman, T.A. Yakovleva, O.Yu. Shevchenko.
Chapter 1. The concept of the role of the insurance category in insurance theory
1.1 The concept of the term “insurance” and “the essence of insurance”
The process of emergence of interest in insurance can be schematically represented as follows (Fig. 1.1).
A person can protect himself and his property by creating stocks and reserves in one form or another. But in order to ensure the same standard of living or, say, production in the same volume after the occurrence of some negative event (for example, a fire), these stocks and reserves must be equivalent in volume to what is in use, in production. In this situation, the idea of uniting interested parties could not help but arise for a joint settlement of damages - compensation for losses to one or more victims through common efforts. Moreover, life experience shows that the number of victims of natural disasters, accidents, and thefts is always less than the number of people who fear the occurrence of negative events. This once again confirms the benefit of jointly apportioning damages between interested parties. And the more participants in the association, the smaller the share of funds that each of them must allocate to compensate for losses to the victim.
Figure 1.1 – Subjective prerequisites for the emergence of insurance
It must be said that the joint assessment of damage is always closed in nature, since only a participant in the association of interested parties can receive compensation for losses (Fig. 1.2).
1 – insurance premium,
2 – insurance payment
Figure 1.2 – Scheme of joint damage breakdown
The original meaning of insurance lies in the closed, solidary participation of interested parties in compensating damage from negative events to the affected members of the association. It was in the form of mutual insurance, when the members of the association are both policyholders and insurers, that insurance was carried out in the early stages of its development. At this time, as a rule, an insurance fund was not formed, and in the event of negative events, the members of the association jointly provided assistance to the victims. During further development insurance and its transformation into the sphere of entrepreneurship, the primary, initial signs of insurance (the presence of insurable interest and a closed joint arrangement of damage between interested parties) were supplemented with other specific features.
Today, insurance is carried out only in relation to probable events, i.e. such events about which it is impossible to know in advance whether they will happen or not. Events that are known in advance that they will definitely happen or, conversely, will never happen, are not insurable.
Insurers, taking into account the probability of the occurrence of a particular insured event, as well as data on the number of damaged objects as a result of one insured event, the average amount of damage and, accordingly, the average amount of payments, determine the amount of insurance premiums paid by policyholders. From these contributions, insurance funds are formed, used by insurers to pay compensation in the event of damage to the insured property interests of policyholders. Therefore, it is the insurance fund that is the instrument for calculating and redistributing damage among policyholders. But redistribution is carried out not only between policyholders. Damage can also be redistributed over time. During certain quieter periods of time, fewer insured events occur, which allows the insurer to reserve funds and use them to pay compensation in unfavorable years. But in any case, there is a return of funds mobilized by insurers to insurance funds. These funds, minus insurers' overhead costs, are returned to policyholders in the form of insurance payments. However, the implementation of this feature of insurance activity is carried out differently in accumulative and risk types of insurance.
Events for which insurance contracts are currently concluded include:
1) damage or destruction of the property of the insured;
2) causing harm to the life and health of the insured;
3) damage caused by the insured to property or life and health of a third party;
4) survival to retirement age;
5) survival of the policyholder to the event or age specified in the contract.
Insurance of the first three groups of risks refers to risk types of insurance. Insurance of the fourth and fifth risk groups is cumulative.
All types of commercial relationships are based on the equivalence and obligation to transfer a product or service for money to the buyer. In insurance, these principles manifest themselves quite specifically. In short-term or risk types of insurance, the policyholder, having paid premiums, may not receive an insurance service in the form of an insurance payment if the event for which the contract was concluded did not occur during the insurance period. Payments paid by him are not returned to the policyholder. insurance premiums. Materialization of insurance guarantees is carried out only for injured policyholders. For example, an insurance company can insure 10,000 people in a year, but only 50 will actually receive insurance services. Moreover, the policyholder, having paid, for example, 5% of the insured amount at the conclusion of the contract, upon the occurrence of an insured event, can receive compensation in the amount of 100% of the cost of the insured property , i.e. in risk types of insurance, there is no individual equivalence in the relationship between the policyholder and the insurer.
The insurance equivalence in this case is that all premiums (less insurer overhead) collected from customers over a tariff period (for example, 5 years) will be paid during that time, but only to affected policyholders. At the core risk insurance lies a joint assessment of the damage.
In longer-term cumulative types of insurance, the relationship between the policyholder and the insurer is always equivalent. In this case, the policyholder will definitely receive insurance payment in one form or another, and the insurer is obliged to ensure the accumulation of the appropriate amount for each concluded contract. They can be formed, firstly, by receiving appropriate contributions from policyholders and, secondly, by investing the funds received in areas determined by the state. The money, “working”, will generate income, which will allow the insurer to reduce the amount of policyholder premiums by this amount.
Thus, insurance can be defined as a set of redistribution relations vicious circle its participants regarding the formation of a targeted insurance fund, intended to compensate for possible damage to the property of legal entities and individuals, as well as to provide material support for citizens upon the occurrence of certain events in their lives.
1.2 History of insurance
The first signs of insurance appeared in ancient times. Thus, according to sources that have come down to us, in slave-owning society there were agreements, the essence of which was the desire to distribute among all interested parties the risk of possible damage when the joint property interests of many persons were endangered. In the Middle East, even two millennia BC during the era of the Babylonian king Hammurabi, members of a trade caravan entered into agreements with each other to jointly compensate for losses that befell one of them along the way, from robbery, theft or loss of goods. Similar agreements were concluded in Palestine and Syria in case of death, torn to pieces by wild animals, theft or loss of a donkey from one of the caravan participants. In the field of merchant shipping, agreements on the mutual distribution of losses from shipwrecks and other maritime dangers were concluded between merchant shipowners in the states in the north of the Persian Gulf, Phenicia and Ancient Greece.
These and other similar cases are characterized by one feature: there are still no insurance premiums that are regularly paid by the participants in such agreements. The latter undertake only the obligation to compensate the losses of the victim after they arise, through a special collection of funds among all persons participating in the agreement. This organization of insurance protection, which consists of obligations to compensate for losses not from a pre-formed insurance fund, but by subsequent distribution of the amount of damage suffered by one of the parties to the agreement among all its members, is the oldest form of insurance.
Subsequently, insurance relations begin to be built on the basis of regular contributions paid by the parties to the agreement, which leads to preliminary accumulation money fund, which is used to compensate for the resulting damage. Thus, there is a transition from the subsequent allocation of losses to a system of periodic, firmly defined insurance premiums and preliminary accumulation of the insurance fund. However, such a transition occurs gradually and for a long time both of the above systems of insurance protection exist in parallel, complementing each other, the first mainly in the field of trade, and the second mainly in the field of crafts. Another characteristic feature of the insurance relations that existed during this period is that they bore the features of mutual insurance, that is, insurance coverage was provided through professional and corporate organizations that protected the property interests of their members. Mutual insurance received its greatest development in Ancient Rome, where it was widely used in various trade unions and colleges.
Insurance in the Middle Ages was usually called guild-guild insurance. Initially, it was similar in nature to insurance in the professional colleges of the slave society. At the same time, it went through approximately the same stages of development as insurance in the ancient world: from the subsequent breakdown of the damage suffered by each individual participant in the agreement - to a system of pre-established and periodically paid insurance premiums, from which an insurance fund was formed, used to compensate for losses, incurred by the parties to the agreement. At the same time, the cases in which payments were made were specified, and the amounts of such payments were more strictly specified. In particular, already at that time there was a division of insurance into property and personal. Property insurance provided for compensation for damage resulting from natural disasters, shipwrecks, fires, loss of livestock, thefts and robberies. Personal insurance provided for the payment of certain amounts in case of illness, as well as the issuance of benefits for funeral and maintenance of widows and orphans in the event of the death of the head of the family.
Thus, medieval insurance differed from the ancient one primarily in a wider and more specific list of insurance cases, which covered many insurance risks, inherent modern insurance property and personal insurance. At a later stage of development, medieval insurance loses its closed character; participants in insurance funds often become persons outside the corporation. However, even during this period, the separation of the insurer from the policyholder had not yet occurred, and therefore, despite certain features inherent in insurance in various socio-economic conditions and regions of the world, what is common to it throughout the entire period under review is that members of one or another group They insured themselves and did not aim to make a profit.
Under the conditions of the capitalist mode of production, insurance acquires a commercial character, its goal is to make a profit. As a result, insurance coverage turns into a specific product, the sale of which generates income, and insurance activity becomes one of the types of business. The history of the development of insurance in the era of capitalism can be divided into three stages: the first - begins in the middle of the 14th century and continues until the end of the 17th century; the second - covers the XVIII and first half of XIX century; the third - begins in the middle of the 19th century and continues to the present day.
The first stage corresponds to the period of initial capital accumulation. It is characterized by the emergence of an insurance contract. The first insurance policy, according to historians, was issued in 1347 for the transportation of cargo from Genoa to the island of Mallorca. However, contracts at this stage were, as a rule, concluded by persons who did not specialize exclusively in insurance activities, as well as mutual insurance associations. Among the types of operations, transport, and primarily marine insurance, predominates at this time. Northern Italy is considered the first center of such insurance. Somewhat later, insurance appeared in Spain, and from the second half of the 16th century its center moved to the northwestern coast of Europe (to the Netherlands and then to Germany). In the 17th century, insurance received significant development in France.
The second stage is characterized by the emergence and development of specialized insurance companies. The first harbinger of the modern insurance company was the Marine Insurance Society, founded in 1668 in Paris, which, however, quickly collapsed. In 1720, two marine insurance societies were created in England. Then insurance companies appeared in other countries: in Italy (Genoa - 1741), Denmark (1746), Sweden (1750), etc. In Germany, the first marine insurance societies were created in 1765 in Hamburg and Berlin. From the beginning of the 18th century, leadership in the development of insurance passed to England, which retained it in the 19th century.
Since the end of the 17th century, changes have been taking place in the types of insurance. Marine insurance is no longer the only type of insurance that has developed. Fire insurance, in particular, is becoming increasingly important, sparked by the fire in London in 1666, which lasted four days and destroyed 13,200 houses. After him, the Fire Office was established in London, which was engaged in the insurance of houses and other structures, which began to carry out insurance operations in 1681. In the middle of the 18th century, life insurance also appeared in England. At the end of the 18th century, agricultural insurance appeared. Moreover, France is considered to be the birthplace of hail insurance, and Germany is considered the birthplace of livestock insurance. With the development of machine production in the mid-19th century, first in Great Britain and then in Germany and other countries, accident insurance appeared. In 1825, civil liability insurance appeared in France.
At the third stage of development, insurance becomes a form of large enterprise. This stage began with the merger of insurance organizations and the creation of insurance cartels and concerns. One of the first large insurance cartels of an international nature was created in Berlin in 1874. It included 16 insurance companies different countries(Austria, Russia, Sweden, etc.). But the process of creating large monopolistic associations became especially pronounced after the First World War. By the early 1920s, insurance began to be seen as one of the most profitable areas in business. Since then, it has been one of the leading areas of the economy, which has concentrated significant capital.
The main features characterizing the formation and development modern market insurance services are: 1) consolidation and increase in the size of capital and assets of insurance organizations; 2) significant growth in the volume of insurance transactions; 3) variety of types of insurance; 4) carrying out compulsory insurance operations; 5) development of reinsurance operations; 6) creation developed system insurance intermediaries; 7) system development state supervision over the activities of insurance organizations; 8) transformation of insurance companies into the largest investors, accumulating and placing a significant part of financial resources; 9) insurance going beyond national borders, acquiring an international character and, as a natural result of this process, the globalization of the insurance market.
1.3 Functions and role of insurance as an economic category
In countries with developed market economy insurance plays an important and multifaceted role. According to Yu.A. Spletukhova and E.F. Dyuzhikov, in this regard, four functions of insurance can be distinguished: loss compensation function, social, investment and preventive.
Other authors (for example, T.A. Yakovleva and O.Yu. Shevchenko) have the point of view that there are three main functions of insurance: preventive, savings (according to the author, this function can be correlated with social), risk (loss compensation function ) . In addition to these functions, these authors point out that a number of other works highlight insurance functions such as control, credit and investment.
Through the insurance mechanism, a significant share of losses resulting from fires, natural disasters, man-made disasters and other random events of an unfavorable nature is compensated. Thus, insurance performs the function of compensation for losses.
The compensation received from insurance companies is usually used for the restoration (and, with the use of additional funds from policyholders, for the modernization) of lost and damaged material assets, which ultimately contributes to economic growth.
Insurance is widely used to solve social problems of society, i.e. it performs a social function. This role of insurance is manifested in several aspects. First of all, insurance organizations provide great assistance to the insured in case of loss of ability to work and the onset of disability as a result of accidents and illnesses. Insurance companies finance the treatment and rehabilitation of victims and compensate the latter for lost income. In the event of the death of the insured, his relatives are paid funds that allow them not to reduce the achieved standard of living. Payments to citizens of compensation for lost or damaged property also help maintain the level of material wealth they have achieved. Thus, insurance plays the role of a stabilizer of the standard of living of citizens.
IN last years The role of insurance in pension provision is significantly increasing. Declining birth rates and increasing life expectancy in developed countries have led to a decrease in the working population and an increase in the number of retirees. Many countries experience difficulties in implementing public pension programs based on the pay-as-you-go principle. Government spending on pension provision are already too large, and their further growth is simply impossible. In this situation, contracts pension insurance, concluded at the expense of citizens or their employers, on the one hand, increase the standard of living of pensioners, and on the other, reduce the financial burden on the state.
Further, insurance contributes to the realization of the savings needs of the population. Citizens cannot make many large expenses (for example, related to the purchase of housing, a car, education costs) from their current income, so they need to save money. One of the ways to organize such savings is to conclude life insurance contracts. In addition, insurance organizations are employers, solving the problem of unemployment. In countries with a developed insurance market, up to 1% of the working population is employed in insurance.
With the help of insurance, savings are mobilized for the development of the national economy. Thus, insurance fulfills investment function. It is common knowledge that countries that have been able to save more tend to grow faster. Unlike commercial banks, which specialize in raising funds for a short period, insurance organizations (especially life insurance companies) have funds received in the form of insurance premiums for a long time (10 years or more). In this regard, in economically developed countries, insurance companies are the largest investors. The stable inflow of funds and long-term obligations of insurance organizations made them an ideal source of “long-term money” for business and government.
With the help of insurance, the probability of the occurrence of various unfavorable events is reduced and losses from such events are reduced, thereby insurance performs a preventive function. This insurance function manifests itself in two aspects.
Firstly, insurance organizations use part of the payments received under insurance contracts to form special reserves for preventive measures. Funds from these reserves are used to finance measures aimed at preventing accidents, fires, natural disasters, accidents, and diseases.
Secondly, the preventive function of insurance is manifested in the fact that insurance organizations require their clients to take certain measures themselves aimed at reducing the likelihood of the occurrence of events against which insurance contracts are concluded.
Chapter 2 The role of insurance in the socio-economic development of Russia
2.1 The role of insurance in regulating socio-economic relations of the Russian Federation
The form of organization of insurance relations is understood as the organizational and legal conditions established by the state for managing risks of varying scale, devastatingness and social significance. Such conditions, as established by national law, include:
· mandatory or voluntary conclusion of insurance contracts;
· insurance coverage;
· establishing insurance conditions and insurance rates;
· a list of insured events, upon the occurrence of which the obligation to make an insurance payment arises;
· appointment of a special entity providing insurance or providing the policyholder with the right to select entities from among those with state permission to conduct insurance operations.
Based on the identified criteria, it is possible to justify the following system forms of organizing insurance relations in national economy(Fig. 2.1).
Figure 2.1 – Scheme of the form of organization of insurance relations
Let's take a closer look character traits each of the identified forms of organizing insurance relations:
(1) compulsory social insurance - is a form of insurance related to the management of macroeconomic social and demographic risks in society.
(2) voluntary social insurance - a form of insurance provided for in Art. 39 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation (until now, this form of insurance remains unaccounted for in scientific classifications).
The general criterion for identifying the above forms is social insurance is their use in relation to social risk management. In accordance with paragraph 7 of the Guidelines included in the Recommendations of the International Labor Organization, such standard social risks are: illness, motherhood, disability, old age, death of the breadwinner, unemployment, expenses due to emergency circumstances, work injury.
(3) compulsory insurance other than social - is a form of insurance related to the management of macroeconomic social risks in certain areas of public life.
Using this form of organizing insurance relations, the state, while establishing compulsory and universal insurance for certain categories of citizens or business entities, defining the basic conditions of insurance and the grounds for payment of insurance amounts, nevertheless entrusts the organization of insurance relations to a wide range of insurance organizations that meet the requirements, also established by the state (in particular, licenses for the right to conduct a certain type of compulsory insurance).
In the Russian Federation, the list of types of compulsory insurance is quite wide - more than 40 federal laws and legislative acts establish in one form or another the compulsory nature of certain types of insurance, the most important among them are compulsory insurance of military personnel, compulsory insurance of civil servants in the performance of official duties, compulsory insurance of judges, compulsory insurance" of professional liability when carrying out notarial activities, compulsory personal insurance of passengers.
(4) voluntary insurance other than social - is a form of managing microeconomic risks inherent economic activity individual business entities, as well as the activities and lives of citizens in society.
Voluntariness in insurance means that the transfer of risk from the policyholder to the insurer in accordance with the terms of the insurance contract occurs on the basis of the free will of the parties and their full agreement on the essential terms of the insurance contract.
2.2 The role of insurance in the formation of investment capital in the Russian Federation
In the global economy, insurance companies are among the largest collective investors and take an active investment position. This kind of activity directly depends on the dynamics of the insurance market as a whole. If it is positive, then the insurance services segment accumulates an impressive amount of resources, and the investment activities of insurers reduce the burden on the state budget (special pension programs) and make insurers a source of long-term resources.
In Russia, there is an extensive development of the insurance industry. Companies are focused primarily on making profits from clients by inflating tariffs and tightening the terms of insurance payments, rather than on investing - using their own resources. Meanwhile, in world practice, investment activity is the most important source of income for insurance organizations, after insurance.
However, over the past few years, the Russian Federation has been actively involved in global business processes, which will force the insurance market, in particular insurance companies, as investors, to become more active.
The latest innovation was the inclusion of insurance organizations in the list of qualified investors by force of law, and, as a result, their admission to investing in securities with limited circulation. Such assets are potentially highly profitable, but investing in them involves high risks.
According to Russian legislation, insurers can place their own funds and insurance reserves. The share of borrowed funds largely prevails over own funds, so it is interesting to consider investing in insurance reserves. The process of investing raised funds is regulated by the Rules for the placement of insurance reserves by insurers.
Assets accepted to cover insurance reserves must satisfy the conditions of diversification, liquidity, repayment, and only lastly (in the opinion of the regulator) profitability. Insurance reserves must be sufficient to fulfill obligations under insurance, coinsurance, and reinsurance contracts. Therefore, the legislator has established strict requirements for their composition and structure.
However, in line with the reforms and primarily in connection with the recognition of insurance companies as qualified investors, new opportunities are opening up for them.
Probably, new prospects will affect the list of assets available for investment and limits on them (structures).
Despite the fact that the composition of assets provided for covering insurance reserves includes instruments that are not available, for example, to non-state pension funds, it needs to be expanded.
First of all, this concerns the inclusion of shares of closed-end mutual investment funds in the list of assets. The design of a closed-end mutual investment fund will allow for profitable investment indirectly in:
· real estate;
· venture projects;
· real sector of the economy;
IN foreign practice investing in undervalued assets is common. Given the foreign experience, there may be an opportunity to invest in funds that invest in shares of small and mid-cap companies preparing to conduct an initial public offering (pre-IPO). It seems that the mechanism of closed mutual investment funds (new categories of funds in the Russian collective investment market) will be used.
Of course, for investing in projects designed for long term, “long-term” money is needed, so priority inclusion of closed-end mutual fund units in the list of assets available for investment of insurance reserves is possible in relation to life insurance reserves.
When carrying out reforms, they always take into account modern conditions functioning of the market. In an unstable environment, instruments that help hedge risks attract attention. Taking into account the qualifications of investors, it is permissible to include derivative financial instruments (derivatives) in the “investment list”.
Insurance companies can invest directly in both securities and precious metals, and in real estate, in connection with the provided list of instruments, special attention is drawn to the structuring of assets.
If we compare the structure of assets accepted to cover the insurance reserves of Russian and foreign insurance companies, it is clear that the main share in the assets of Russian insurers is occupied by bank bills, deposits, reinsurers' shares in reserves and government securities; while foreign insurers invest in bonds and shares, ensuring the flow of investment resources into the economy and generating income.
Of course, in order to increase investment limits, you need to clearly predict the demand for invested resources. First of all, such a calculation is possible with long-term life insurance reserves.
It is likely that there will be a reduction in restrictions on investing in shares of mutual funds, on direct investments in the real estate market (it is less volatile than the stock market), in precious metals, and mortgage-backed securities.
The placement of insurance reserve funds can be carried out by the insurer independently, as well as by transferring part of the funds (up to 20% of the total amount of insurance reserves) to an individual trust management. At the same time, there is no possibility of transferring funds for management to non-residents.
Since investment activity is not core for insurance organizations, it is reasonable to set the share of insurance reserves available for transfer to more than 20%.
In addition, the positive dynamics of the insurance market and, as a consequence, investment activities insurers, requires the development of consulting in this segment.
The vector of development of the Russian economy is aimed at stimulating the activities of, first of all, large (institutional) investors. There is no fundamental difference between the activities of investment institutions (Banks, non-state pension funds, insurance companies and others) there are no funds in the area of placement.
However, the requirements for the placement of funds are differentiated, including the intensity of reform in this industry. The activity of investing funds from insurance reserves has its own specifics - the period of demand for insurance reserves other than life insurance is less predictable than, for example, the need to pay out funds from non-state pension funds. The Ministry of Finance recognizes the need for reforms to provide insurance organizations with new investment opportunities, but takes a conservative position on the timing. The regulator, represented by the Federal Service for Financial Markets, provided the basis for further reforms by including insurers in the list of qualified investors by force of law; the intensification of the process remains in the hands of the insurers themselves.
2.3 The role of insurance in the development of the national economy of the Russian Federation
The development of market relations, when the commodity producer begins to act at his own peril and risk, according to his own plan and bears responsibility for this, increases the role and importance of insurance. At the same time, along with the traditional purpose - providing protection from natural disasters (earthquakes, floods, storms, etc.), random events of a technical and technological nature (fires, accidents, explosions, etc.) - losses from various criminogenic phenomena are increasingly becoming the object of insurance (theft, robbery, theft Vehicle and etc.). Enterprises and organizations of various forms of ownership, acting as insurers, feel the need not only for compensation for damage expressed in loss or damage to fixed assets and working capital, but also in compensation for lost profits or additional expenses due to forced downtime of enterprises (irregular supplies of raw materials, insolvency of wholesale buyers).
The changes also affect the sphere of property and personal insurance of citizens, which is directly related to the economic interests of the population. The ratio of long-term and short-term contracts insurance, the combination of risk, precautionary and savings insurance conditions, the level of bank interest on the reserve of contributions under life insurance contracts, taking into account price trends and the implementation of anti-inflationary measures with the transition to a market economy inevitably become the subject of insurance policy. The supply of insurance services is increasing. The insurance market is gradually being formed. Priority is given to voluntary types of insurance, although in certain areas compulsory insurance is maintained or even introduced (for example, medical, military accident insurance, etc.).
In the market economy of the Russian Federation at the stage of its formation, insurance acts, on the one hand, as a means of protecting business and people’s well-being, and on the other, as an income-generating activity. The sources of profit for an insurance organization are income from insurance activities, from investments of temporarily free funds in objects of production and non-production areas of activity, shares of enterprises, bank deposits, securities, etc.
Insurance serves as an important factor in stimulating production activity and ensuring a healthy lifestyle, creates new incentives for increasing labor productivity in accordance with personal contribution to production and ensuring one’s own well-being.
Chapter 3 Assessment of the state and prospects for the development of insurance in the Russian economy
3.1 Assessment of the development of the modern insurance market in the Russian Federation
The first half of 2008 in the Russian insurance market was marked by two trends: the equalization of tariffs and a decrease in the growth rate of insurance related to credit products. It is not market share that is gradually coming to the fore for insurers, but the sustainability and profitability of the business.
At the end of the first half of 2008, Russian insurance companies collected 293 billion rubles in premiums for direct insurance(without compulsory medical insurance), which is 44 billion rubles or 17.6% more than similar period previous year. Increase in contributions to this year slowed down - in the first half of 2007 it was 3.1 percentage points higher. The largest segments of the Russian insurance market continue to be motor hull insurance (according to a study by the Expert RA rating agency, the volume of premiums collected for this type of insurance in the first half of 2008 amounted to 76.4 billion rubles), VHI (53. 0 billion rubles), compulsory motor liability insurance (39.1 billion rubles) and insurance of property of legal entities against fire and other risks (31.3 billion rubles).
Three of the four main ones Russian market types of insurance showed a decrease in the growth rate of insurance premiums: the growth rate of auto insurance premiums in the first half of 2008 decreased by 5.6 percentage points. compared to the first half of 2007 and amounted to 35.1%, for compulsory motor liability insurance the decrease was 4.8 percentage points to a level of 12.9%. While for retail types we are talking about a slowdown in growth rates, in the property insurance of legal entities there was an absolute decrease in the amount of collected insurance premiums by 6.3% (in the first half of 2007 there was an increase of 5.6%). The growth rate increased only in voluntary health insurance – from 15.6 to 23.4%.
Minimal growth in premiums for fire risks and cargo is a general trend in the corporate insurance segment. The main factors negatively affecting the performance of this segment are the reduction of tariffs - both due to tougher competition and the reduction in the cost of reinsurance protection in Western companies - as well as the withdrawal of a significant volume of schemes from the market.
While the reduction in premiums for property insurance of legal entities is only a continuation of a trend that formed quite a long time ago, the “slowdown” of car insurance is a new and very unfavorable phenomenon for Russian insurers, caused by reasons external to the insurance market. The high growth rates of auto hull insurance are mainly associated with the practice of imputed insurance for car loans, which experienced a real boom about a year ago. Consequences of the global financial crisis For Russian economy expressed, among others, in a decrease in the growth rate of loans Russian banks. As a result, the growth of credit auto insurance also slowed down.
Expectations regarding further prospects for the growth of auto insurance among most market participants are quite pessimistic. Hypertrophied growth wages, outstripping the growth rate of labor productivity and caused by a shortage work force, cannot continue for long, and accelerating inflation will force people to postpone both expensive purchases and loans due to limited funds for the purchase of essential goods. Accordingly, changes in consumption patterns will lead to a decrease in the growth rate of auto insurance.
Russian insurers expect a decrease in the growth rate of premiums for comprehensive insurance of cars purchased on credit at the end of this year and the beginning of next year. Decline in industrial production growth rates, outflow foreign investment, as well as a reduction in growth rates real income population create additional preconditions for a possible slowdown in insurance development next year.
The growth rate of the VHI market is also very low. The reason is that the state has still not been able to clearly define what mandatory health insurance: Social Security or an element of insurance. That is why it is impossible to give an accurate forecast of the VHI market: will it be a separate component not related to compulsory medicine, or will it be a good addition to the compulsory health insurance program.
In the first half of 2008, the trends of last year, associated with a steady increase in the unprofitability of motor insurance (both compulsory motor liability insurance and comprehensive insurance), continued and intensified.
Compulsory civil liability insurance continues to drag down market indicators - loss ratios in many regions of Russia have long since overcome critical levels, and some insurers are making it difficult for consumers to purchase policies by moving compulsory motor third party liability insurance sales points to hard-to-reach places and not attracting special attention car owners to the opportunity to insure themselves under compulsory motor liability insurance with them. As many insurers note, given the extent to which this type of insurance covers the population of the country and its obligatory nature for car owners, the problem from an economic one is beginning to acquire a political nature. Due to the mandatory nature of the established tariffs for compulsory motor liability insurance, only the state can resolve the issue.
A new phenomenon for domestic insurance was the first public recognition of auto hull insurance losses by some leading insurers. In reality, this type of insurance turned out to be unprofitable for a much larger number of companies than was announced to the market. This especially applies to motor hull insurance through car dealerships.
In motor insurance financial results decreases, mainly, not due to inadequate tariffs, but due to exorbitant commission fees to agents. The highest demand comes from non-insurance intermediaries, primarily from car dealerships, which dictate their terms to insurers. According to many market participants, commissions have reached such high values that their further increase or even maintaining at the same level will make auto insurance activities completely unprofitable. As a result, we can expect the beginning of a gradual reduction in commission fees for intermediaries.
The reason for this situation is that many insurance companies, in the process of preparing for sale to the Western market, are striving to develop sales networks and increase the volume of insurance premiums in the simplest way - through price dumping and increasing the commission of insurance intermediaries. In conditions where the share investment income Russian insurance companies are extremely low and the combined loss ratio is growing, insurers need to increase the profitability of their business.
The first half of 2008 showed that the majority of insurance companies began an internal transformation - a transition from targets aimed at capturing the largest possible market share at any cost, to a focus on other results. The obvious thesis that the insurance business, like any other, must make a profit, is gradually becoming the goal of an increasing number of insurers. As a result, the process of tariff equalization began in the market - bringing different companies closer to the market average level.
The main trend of last year is that many insurance companies are choosing not in favor of “tariff wars” and dumping operations, but in favor of the reliability of the company, its reserves, and the stability of the insurance portfolio. In the first half of 2008, this trend became even more obvious: it became clear that this was a pattern and not a random “spike.” Another obvious trend is directly related to the consolidation of new methods of fighting for clients in the market - the pursuit of a client-centric policy modeled on Western companies. In addition to the size of insurance rates, the quality of service will be increasingly important to the client.
3.2 Difficulties and prospects for the development of the insurance business in the Russian Federation
The Russian insurance market is growing rapidly - real premiums (excluding tax-saving schemes, which are not actually insurance) are increasing annually at rates exceeding 30%. The rapid growth of insurance premiums can lead to the blissful illusion that it will continue to be the same. Meanwhile, a significant number of insurers do not see long-term prospects for their development; they solve exclusively short-term problems, declaring as their goal the extensive growth of premiums and market share through dumping and sales in medium term foreign investor. Low level capitalization of Russian insurers and the weakness of the national reinsurance market contribute to the formation of dependence of the country's economy on global financial markets and the gradual transformation of Russian insurance companies into intermediaries.
Such a development of events will inevitably lead to the fact that the insurance industry of our country will not only lose its sovereignty, but also will not be able to satisfy the increasing needs of the Russian economy for insurance protection. Such growth is not favorable for the Russian economy.
The Russian economy needs a powerful national insurance market that would develop due to voluntary species insurance and non-price competition, the foundation of stability and successful dynamics of which would be a significant, many times higher than the current state, capitalization of domestic insurers. The steps necessary to achieve this model are formulated in the concept of development of the insurance market as part of financial system RF, developed by the rating agency "Expert RA" together with the Association of Regional Banks "Russia".
The development of an insurance market capable of meeting all the needs of the growing and increasingly complex Russian economy is possible only if two key principles embedded in the concept are implemented: insurance of assets at their real value and the establishment of a single economic cost of living for compensation for harm to life and health for all types of insurance.
The concept of economic cost of living should be unified and defined depending on the average level of wages, education costs and medical service. The insurance system must provide truly worthy compensation for harm to the life and health of every person, regardless of the type of insurance under which the insured event occurred. The real value of assets in the economy should be calculated based on fair value, for example, from the discounted value of future cash flows generated by these assets. Undercapitalized assets or completely withdrawn from circulation (in Russia these include land and forest resources, and partly real estate, and intellectual property) will be properly formalized in terms of the specification of property rights and will become the object of financial transactions. In other words, they will become part of the economy, they will be able to be the subject of collateral, the basis for issuing valuable papers, they will become liquid, and they will need to be insured accordingly market value.
The insurance market of the Russian Federation must be open, but at the same time maintain its sovereignty. The insurance market is much more important than, for example, the car manufacturing segment. There will be no domestic automakers - this will negatively affect the country's economy. If we lose the national insurance market, then Russia will lose competitive advantages in other areas, will increase systemic risks in the economy. A powerful insurance market is possible with the emergence in Russia of truly large national players - insurance companies that can effectively compete with foreign insurers. Without a significant increase in capitalization, and in the near future, the sovereignty of the insurance market will be lost. According to the Bank of Russia, the own funds of Russian insurers in 2007 amounted to 208.3 billion rubles ($8.5 billion), having decreased by 6.4% compared to 2006.
In order to absorb the increasing volume of risks and withstand increasing competition, insurance companies must significantly increase their own retention rate through growth own funds. Total authorized capital Russian insurance companies by 2020 should reach at least 750 billion rubles in 2007 prices ($30.6 billion), that is, grow 4.4 times, and the value of total industry assets in 2020 should be at least 3.3 trillion rubles in 2007 prices ($134.4 billion) versus 675 billion rubles ($25.6 billion) at the beginning of 2007.
The Russian reinsurance market should become a large regional reinsurance center, focusing its development on a significant increase in the role of specialized reinsurers. Large national players (partially supported by the state) should appear on the market, capable of taking on very significant risks. Among the most important tasks of the state is the elimination of institutional restrictions on accepting contributions for incoming reinsurance from abroad. In such conditions, incoming reinsurance premiums will grow at an accelerated pace, up to 750 billion rubles ($30.6 billion) in 2020.
Rosgosstrakh (RGS) predicts the growth rate of the insurance market in 2008-2009 at the level of 25-30%. Already in 2008, the total volume of collected premiums, according to the RGS analytical report, will slightly exceed 1 trillion rubles, and in 2009 it will amount to 1.3 trillion rubles. Top managers of other insurance companies believe that the insurance market will develop according to a more restrained scenario.
Insurance premium collections will continue to increase in 2009-2010; the growth of insurance premiums in 2009, despite the crisis, will be at least 15-20%. This opinion was expressed to the Interfax-AFI agency by the head of the Center for Strategic Analysis of Rosgosstrakh, Alexey Zubets.
The head of the Federal Insurance Supervision Service, Ilya Lomakin-Rumyantsev, said that the insurance community should be prepared for a drop in premium collections next year by 25% and even 50%.
3.3 Measures to improve insurance in the Russian Federation
To ensure continuity of production and maintain social stability in society, it is necessary to minimize the level of underinsurance of risks in the economy. By 2020, the level of insurance coverage for risks traditionally subject to insurance in developed countries should approach 100%, and the total market volume should reach 3 trillion rubles ($122.2 billion) in 2007 prices, or 4% of GDP. Insurance instead of creation off-budget funds or direct financing of eliminating the consequences of man-made or natural disasters, accidents and other events is the only way to reduce the burden on public finance while increasing the efficiency of risk management.
In the future, the basis of the Russian insurance market should be voluntary insurance. It is necessary to revise the operating principles of existing types of compulsory insurance in favor of market mechanisms, and the role of compulsory types of insurance in the development of the Russian insurance market should gradually decrease. The share of compulsory types of insurance in total insurance premiums by 2020 should not exceed 25%. However, this does not mean that now we should completely abandon the new mandatory types. For example, operators' liability insurance is particularly dangerous objects or some other types of liability insurance - these are precisely those cases where compulsory insurance is appropriate. In the first stage, these types will become the locomotive of development, and then changes and reforms will be necessary to improve efficiency. Of course, imputed insurance, due to its greater flexibility, is a more effective way to ensure the protection of the interests of third parties compared to legally regulated mandatory types insurance. Replacing licensing and certification of products with imputed types of insurance will also solve the problem of improving the quality of work and services. The most important issue here is to work out the calculation of tariffs and conditions so as not to repeat the mistakes of the OSAGO system.
The growing role of insurance as a necessary condition normal functioning of the entire Russian economy should be accompanied by increased requirements for the reliability and transparency of Russian insurance companies. The assessment of the level of adequacy of insurers' own funds should be carried out on the basis of the Solvency II principles developed by International Association insurance supervisory authorities. In addition, it is necessary to prepare and implement risk management standards into the practice of insurers, including an actuarial audit and holding investment committees when placing insurance reserves (management of market, credit risks, liquidity risks). Also, within two to three years, it is necessary to introduce requirements for reporting under IFRS and expand requirements for financial stability and reliability ratings in tender and accreditation requirements.
Competition between players in the insurance market should occur primarily through non-price methods; the market needs to get rid of dumping, inflated agent commissions and kickbacks. Much depends on the companies themselves. And the FAS, in turn, can more actively combat precisely such manifestations of unfair competition and, on the contrary, somewhat soften its position regarding agreements between insurers and banks.
Insurance can be defined as a set of redistributive relations of a closed circle of its participants regarding the formation, through their contributions, of a target insurance fund intended to compensate for possible damage to the property of legal entities and individuals, as well as to provide material support for citizens upon the occurrence of certain events in their lives.
In countries with developed market economies, insurance plays an important and multifaceted role. In this regard, four functions of insurance can be distinguished: indemnity, social, investment and preventive.
Economic and social relations in society as a whole, within an individual economic entity or citizen and his family, face risks of varying degrees and breadth of impact, sources and destructiveness. The listed criteria predetermine the use of various forms of organizing insurance relations (forms of insurance). The combination of various forms of insurance for the purpose of risk management at the macro- and microeconomic levels ensures the integrity of the national insurance system.
The domestic insurance business is distinguished by a number of features that distinguish it from its foreign colleagues, therefore, schemes for interaction between insurance organizations and stock market usually have their own characteristics or are simply absent in Russia.
Currently, the access of foreign insurers both in terms of creating subsidiaries on the territory of the Russian Federation and in terms of acquiring shares of existing Russian insurance organizations is practically unlimited. In the near future, the problem will become even more pressing and will become especially aggravated as Russia joins the WTO. A massive foreign “offensive” will force the domestic insurance community to follow international standards business, including activities with financial instruments on the stock market.
The transition of the economy of the Russian Federation from an administrative-command economy to a market economy ensures a significant increase in the role of insurance in social reproduction, significantly expands the scope of insurance services and the development of alternatives to state insurance. Under the command-administrative system of managing the national economy, the dominant role of state property and the weak economic responsibility of managers and work collectives for its safety, insurance could not get its rightful place in the national economy of the Russian Federation and public relations.
The development of market relations, when the commodity producer begins to act at his own peril and risk, according to his own plan and bears responsibility for this, increases the role and importance of insurance.
The Russian insurance market is growing rapidly - real premiums (excluding tax-saving schemes, which are not actually insurance) are increasing annually at rates exceeding 30%. The rapid growth of insurance premiums can lead to the blissful illusion that it will continue to be the same. Meanwhile, a significant number of insurers do not see long-term prospects for their development; they solve exclusively short-term problems, declaring as their goal the extensive growth of premiums and market share through dumping and sale in the medium term to a foreign investor. The low level of capitalization of Russian insurers and the weakness of the national reinsurance market contribute to the formation of dependence of the country's economy on global financial markets and the gradual transformation of Russian insurance companies into intermediaries.
The economy of the Russian Federation needs a powerful national insurance market that would develop through voluntary types of insurance and non-price competition, the foundation of stability and successful dynamics of which would be a significant capitalization of domestic insurers, many times higher than the current state.
To ensure continuity of production and maintain social stability in society, it is necessary to minimize the level of underinsurance of risks in the economy.
In the future, the basis of the Russian insurance market should be voluntary insurance.
Reform of compulsory motor liability insurance should follow the path of tariff liberalization: through the transfer of functions for setting tariffs for compulsory motor liability insurance self-regulatory organization market participants (with annual revision of tariffs) to a complete transition to a market mechanism for setting tariffs. Liability limits under compulsory motor insurance must be calculated taking into account the economic cost of living.
Yakovleva T.A., Shevchenko O.Yu. Insurance. – M.: Economist, 2004. – P. 14.
Vobly K.G. Fundamentals of Insurance Savings. - M.: - ANKIL, 2002. – P. 24.
Zhuravlev Yu.N. Dictionary-reference book of terms for insurance and reinsurance (second edition). - M.: ANKIL, 2007. – P. 131.
Razumovskaya Yu. Opportunities of insurance companies as qualified investors // Country Capital. Magazine about investment opportunities in Russia. – 03.10.2008. - #"#_ftnref10" name="_ftn10" title=""> Razumovskaya Yu. Opportunities of insurance companies as qualified investors // Country Capital. Magazine about investment opportunities in Russia. – 03.10.2008. - #"#_ftnref11" name="_ftn11" title=""> Razumovskaya Yu. Opportunities of insurance companies as qualified investors // Country Capital. Magazine about investment opportunities in Russia. – 03.10.2008. - #"#_ftnref12" name="_ftn12" title=""> Razumovskaya Yu. Opportunities of insurance companies as qualified investors // Country Capital. Magazine about investment opportunities in Russia. – 03.10.2008. - #"#_ftnref13" name="_ftn13" title=""> Razumovskaya Yu. Opportunities of insurance companies as qualified investors // Country Capital. Magazine about investment opportunities in Russia. – 03.10.2008. - #"#_ftnref14" name="_ftn14" title=""> Semyonova et al. “Fundamentals of Insurance Economics.” - M.: “Finance and Statistics”, 2006. – P. 89.
Yanin A. In search of profit // Rating agency "Expert RA". - #"#_ftnref20" name="_ftn20" title=""> Yanin A. In search of profit // Expert RA rating agency. - #"#_ftnref21" name="_ftn21" title=""> Yanin A. In search of profit // Expert RA rating agency. - #"#_ftnref22" name="_ftn22" title=""> Samiev P., Yanin A. New course of the insurance market // Expert. – 2008. - No. 41. - #"#_ftnref23" name="_ftn23" title=""> Ibid.
Samiev P., Yanin A. New course of the insurance market // Expert. – 2008. - No. 41. - #"#_ftnref25" name="_ftn25" title=""> Ibid.
Samiev P., Yanin A. New course of the insurance market // Expert. – 2008. - No. 41. - #"#_ftnref27" name="_ftn27" title=""> Ibid.
Grigorieva E. “Rosgosstrakh” predicts the growth rate of the insurance market in 2008-2009 at the level of 25-30% // Property Map of St. Petersburg. – 01/31/2008. - #"#_ftnref29" name="_ftn29" title=""> The insurance market in 2009, despite the crisis, will grow by 15-20% // Insurance today. - #"#_ftnref30" name="_ftn30" title=""> The Russian insurance market in 2009, despite the crisis, will grow by 15-20% // UNIAN - insurance news. - #"#_ftnref31" name="_ftn31" title=""> Samiev P., Yanin A. New course of the insurance market // Expert. – 2008. - No. 41. - #"#_ftnref32" name="_ftn32" title=""> Samiev P., Yanin A. New course of the insurance market // Expert. – 2008. - No. 41. - #"#_ftnref33" name="_ftn33" title=""> Ibid.
Samiev P., Yanin A. New course of the insurance market // Expert. – 2008. - No. 41. - http://www.expert.ru/printissues/expert/2008/41/novuy_kurs/. – Accessed 20.10.2008.
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Introduction
Insurance has a long history and belongs to such fundamental categories as money, credit, taxes. Today, insurance is a way to compensate for damage caused to the owner of material assets as a result of natural disasters, accidents, fires, earthquakes, robberies, etc. These events disrupt the normal course of a person’s life and are distinguished by their suddenness and unforeseenness.
Naturally, any owner, any person is interested in ensuring the safety of his property, life, health and would like to be able to compensate for the damage caused in the event of an insured event. This interest is the subjective basis for the emergence of insurance.
The object of the work is phenomena and processes in modern society associated with risk.
The subject of the work is the features of insurance as an element of risk minimization.
The purpose of the work is to study the role of insurance in modern society.
Job objectives:
Characteristics of the concept of the term “insurance” and “essence of insurance”;
Outline of the history of insurance;
Characteristics of the function and role of insurance as an economic category;
Studying the role of insurance in regulating socio-economic relations of the Russian Federation;
Characteristics of the role of insurance in the formation of investment capital in the Russian Federation;
Studying the role of insurance in the development of the national economy of the Russian Federation;
Assessment of the development of the modern insurance market in the Russian Federation;
Characteristics of difficulties and prospects for the development of the insurance business in the Russian Federation;
Proposal of measures to improve insurance in the Russian Federation.
The methodological basis for the study was the works of N.R. Ageeva, A.A. Alexandrova, K.G. Voblogo, S.K. Kazantseva, P. Samieva, A. Yanina, L.I. Reitman, V.V. Shakhova, T.A. Yakovleva, O.Yu. Shevchenko.
The empirical basis of the study was data on the state and prospects for the development of insurance in the Russian economy, in particular, the results of the development of the Russian insurance market for 2007, data presented in the study of P. Samiev and A. Yanin on the prospects for the development of the insurance market.
The work uses the works of domestic scientists and authors in the field of insurance: N.R. Ageeva, A.A. Alexandrova, K.G. Voblogo, Yu.N. Zhuravleva, S.K. Kazantseva, P. Samieva, A. Yanina, E.V. Kolomina, V.V. Shakhova, L.I. Reitman, T.A. Yakovleva, O.Yu. Shevchenko.
Chapter 1. The concept of the role of the insurance category in insurance theory
1.1 The concept of the term “insurance” and “the essence of insurance”
The process of emergence of interest in insurance can be schematically represented as follows (Fig. 1.1).
A person can protect himself and his property by creating stocks and reserves in one form or another. But in order to ensure the same standard of living or, say, production in the same volume after the occurrence of some negative event (for example, a fire), these stocks and reserves must be equivalent in volume to what is in use, in production. In this situation, the idea of uniting interested parties could not help but arise for a joint settlement of damages - compensation for losses to one or more victims through common efforts. Moreover, life experience shows that the number of victims of natural disasters, accidents, and thefts is always less than the number of people who fear the occurrence of negative events. This once again confirms the benefit of jointly apportioning damages between interested parties. And the more participants in the association, the smaller the share of funds that each of them must allocate to compensate for losses to the victim.
Figure 1.1 - Subjective prerequisites for the emergence of insurance
It must be said that the joint assessment of damage is always closed in nature, since only a participant in the association of interested parties can receive compensation for losses (Fig. 1.2).
1 - insurance premium,
2 - insurance payment
Figure 1.2 - Scheme of joint damage breakdown
The original meaning of insurance lies in the closed, solidary participation of interested parties in compensating damage from negative events to the affected members of the association. It was in the form of mutual insurance, when the members of the association are both policyholders and insurers, that insurance was carried out in the early stages of its development. At this time, as a rule, an insurance fund was not formed, and in the event of negative events, the members of the association jointly provided assistance to the victims. In the course of the further development of insurance and its transformation into the sphere of entrepreneurship, the primary, initial signs of insurance (the presence of insurable interest and a closed joint arrangement of damage between interested parties) were supplemented with other specific features.
Today, insurance is carried out only in relation to probable events, i.e. such events about which it is impossible to know in advance whether they will happen or not. Events that are known in advance that they will definitely happen or, conversely, will never happen, are not insurable.
Insurers, taking into account the probability of the occurrence of a particular insured event, as well as data on the number of damaged objects as a result of one insured event, the average amount of damage and, accordingly, the average amount of payments, determine the amount of insurance premiums paid by policyholders. From these contributions, insurance funds are formed, used by insurers to pay compensation in the event of damage to the insured property interests of policyholders. Therefore, it is the insurance fund that is the instrument for calculating and redistributing damage among policyholders. But redistribution is carried out not only between policyholders. Damage can also be redistributed over time. During certain quieter periods of time, fewer insured events occur, which allows the insurer to reserve funds and use them to pay compensation in unfavorable years. But in any case, there is a return of funds mobilized by insurers to insurance funds. These funds, minus insurers' overhead costs, are returned to policyholders in the form of insurance payments. However, the implementation of this feature of insurance activity is carried out differently in accumulative and risk types of insurance.
Events for which insurance contracts are currently concluded include:
damage or destruction of the policyholder's property;
harm to the life and health of the policyholder;
damage caused by the insured to property or life and health of a third party;
surviving to retirement age;
survival of the policyholder to the event or age specified in the contract.
Insurance of the first three groups of risks refers to risk types of insurance. Insurance of the fourth and fifth risk groups is cumulative.
All types of commercial relationships are based on the equivalence and obligation to transfer a product or service for money to the buyer. In insurance, these principles manifest themselves quite specifically. In short-term or risk types of insurance, the policyholder, having paid premiums, may not receive an insurance service in the form of an insurance payment if the event for which the contract was concluded did not occur during the insurance period. Insurance premiums paid by him are not returned to the policyholder. Materialization of insurance guarantees is carried out only for injured policyholders. For example, an insurance company can insure 10,000 people in a year, but only 50 will actually receive insurance services. Moreover, the policyholder, having paid, for example, 5% of the insured amount at the conclusion of the contract, upon the occurrence of an insured event, can receive compensation in the amount of 100% of the cost of the insured property , i.e. in risk types of insurance, there is no individual equivalence in the relationship between the policyholder and the insurer.
The insurance equivalence in this case is that all premiums (less insurer overhead) collected from customers over a tariff period (for example, 5 years) will be paid during that time, but only to affected policyholders. The basis of risk insurance is the joint distribution of damage.
In longer-term cumulative types of insurance, the relationship between the policyholder and the insurer is always equivalent. In this case, the policyholder will necessarily receive an insurance payment in one form or another, and the insurer is obliged to ensure the accumulation of the appropriate amount for each concluded contract. They can be formed, firstly, by receiving appropriate contributions from policyholders and, secondly, by investing the funds received in areas determined by the state. The money, “working”, will generate income, which will allow the insurer to reduce the amount of policyholder premiums by this amount.
Thus, insurance can be defined as a set of redistributive relations of a closed circle of its participants regarding the formation, through their contributions, of a target insurance fund intended to compensate for possible damage to the property of legal entities and individuals, as well as to provide material support for citizens upon the occurrence of certain events in their lives.
1.2 History of insurance
The first signs of insurance appeared in ancient times. Thus, according to sources that have come down to us, in slave-owning society there were agreements, the essence of which was the desire to distribute among all interested parties the risk of possible damage when the joint property interests of many persons were endangered. In the Middle East, even two millennia BC during the era of the Babylonian king Hammurabi, members of a trade caravan entered into agreements with each other to jointly compensate for losses that befell one of them along the way, from robbery, theft or loss of goods. Similar agreements were concluded in Palestine and Syria in case of death, torn to pieces by wild animals, theft or loss of a donkey from one of the caravan participants. In the field of merchant shipping, agreements on the mutual distribution of losses from shipwreck and other maritime dangers were concluded between merchant shipowners in the states in the north of the Persian Gulf, in Phenicia and Ancient Greece .
These and other similar cases are characterized by one feature: there are still no insurance premiums that are regularly paid by the participants in such agreements. The latter undertake only the obligation to compensate the losses of the victim after they arise, through a special collection of funds among all persons participating in the agreement. This organization of insurance protection, which consists of obligations to compensate for losses not from a pre-formed insurance fund, but by subsequent distribution of the amount of damage suffered by one of the parties to the agreement among all its members, is the oldest form of insurance.
Subsequently, insurance relations begin to be built on the basis of regular contributions paid by the parties to the agreement, which leads to the preliminary accumulation of a monetary fund, which is used to compensate for damage that occurs. Thus, there is a transition from the subsequent allocation of losses to a system of periodic, firmly defined insurance premiums and preliminary accumulation of the insurance fund. However, such a transition occurs gradually and for a long time both of the above systems of insurance protection exist in parallel, complementing each other, the first mainly in the field of trade, and the second mainly in the field of crafts. Another characteristic feature of the insurance relations that existed during this period is that they bore the features of mutual insurance, that is, insurance coverage was provided through professional and corporate organizations that protected the property interests of their members. Mutual insurance received its greatest development in Ancient Rome, where it was widely used in various trade unions and colleges.
Insurance in the Middle Ages was usually called guild-guild insurance. Initially, it was similar in nature to insurance in the professional colleges of the slave society. At the same time, it went through approximately the same stages of development as insurance in the ancient world: from the subsequent breakdown of the damage suffered by each individual participant in the agreement, to a system of predetermined and periodically paid insurance premiums, from which an insurance fund was formed, used to compensate for losses, incurred by the parties to the contract. At the same time, the cases in which payments were made were specified, and the amounts of such payments were more strictly specified. In particular, already at that time there was a division of insurance into property and personal. Property insurance provided compensation for damage resulting from natural disasters, shipwrecks, fires, livestock deaths, thefts and robberies. Personal insurance provided for the payment of certain amounts in case of illness, as well as the issuance of benefits for funeral and maintenance of widows and orphans in the event of the death of the head of the family.
Thus, medieval insurance differed from ancient insurance primarily in a broader and more specific list of insurance cases, which covered many insurance risks inherent in modern property and personal insurance. At a later stage of development, medieval insurance loses its closed character; participants in insurance funds often become persons outside the corporation. However, even during this period, the separation of the insurer from the policyholder had not yet occurred, and therefore, despite certain features inherent in insurance in various socio-economic conditions and regions of the world, what is common to it throughout the entire period under review is that members of one or another group They insured themselves and did not aim to make a profit.
Under the conditions of the capitalist mode of production, insurance acquires a commercial character, its goal is to make a profit. As a result, insurance coverage turns into a specific product, the sale of which generates income, and insurance activity becomes one of the types of business. The history of the development of insurance in the era of capitalism can be divided into three stages: the first - begins in the middle of the 14th century and continues until the end of the 17th century; the second covers the 18th and first half of the 19th centuries; the third - begins in the middle of the 19th century and continues to the present.
The first stage corresponds to the period of initial capital accumulation. It is characterized by the emergence of an insurance contract. The first insurance policy, according to historians, was issued in 1347 for the transportation of cargo from Genoa to the island of Mallorca. However, contracts at this stage were, as a rule, concluded by persons who did not specialize exclusively in insurance activities, as well as mutual insurance associations. Among the types of operations, transport, and primarily marine insurance, predominates at this time. Northern Italy is considered the first center of such insurance. Somewhat later, insurance appeared in Spain, and from the second half of the 16th century its center moved to the northwestern coast of Europe (to the Netherlands and then to Germany). In the 17th century, insurance received significant development in France.
The second stage is characterized by the emergence and development of specialized insurance companies. The first harbinger of the modern insurance company was the Marine Insurance Society, founded in 1668 in Paris, which, however, quickly collapsed. In 1720, two marine insurance societies were created in England. Then insurance companies appeared in other countries: in Italy (Genoa - 1741), Denmark (1746), Sweden (1750), etc. In Germany, the first marine insurance societies were created in 1765 in Hamburg and Berlin. From the beginning of the 18th century, leadership in the development of insurance passed to England, which retained it in the 19th century. .
Since the end of the 17th century, changes have been taking place in the types of insurance. Marine insurance is no longer the only type of insurance that has developed. Fire insurance, in particular, is becoming increasingly important, sparked by the fire in London in 1666, which lasted four days and destroyed 13,200 houses. After him, the Fire Office was established in London, which was engaged in the insurance of houses and other structures, which began to carry out insurance operations in 1681. In the middle of the 18th century, life insurance also appeared in England. At the end of the 18th century, agricultural insurance appeared. Moreover, France is considered to be the birthplace of hail insurance, and Germany is considered to be the birthplace of livestock insurance. With the development of machine production in the mid-19th century, first in Great Britain and then in Germany and other countries, accident insurance appeared. In 1825, civil liability insurance appeared in France.
At the third stage of development, insurance becomes a form of large enterprise. This stage began with the merger of insurance organizations and the creation of insurance cartels and concerns. One of the first large insurance cartels of an international nature was created in Berlin in 1874. It included 16 insurance companies from different countries (Austria, Russia, Sweden, etc.). But the process of creating large monopolistic associations became especially pronounced after the First World War. By the early 1920s, insurance began to be seen as one of the most profitable areas in business. Since then, it has been one of the leading areas of the economy, which has concentrated significant capital.
The main features characterizing the formation and development of the modern insurance services market are: 1) consolidation and increase in the size of capital and assets of insurance organizations; 2) significant growth in the volume of insurance transactions; 3) variety of types of insurance; 4) carrying out compulsory insurance operations; 5) development of reinsurance operations; 6) creation of a developed system of insurance intermediaries; 7) development of a system of state supervision over the activities of insurance organizations; 8) transformation of insurance companies into the largest investors, accumulating and placing a significant part of financial resources; 9) insurance going beyond national borders, acquiring an international character and, as a natural result of this process, the globalization of the insurance market.
1.3 Functions and role of insurance as an economic category
In countries with developed market economies, insurance plays an important and multifaceted role. According to Yu.A. Spletukhova and E.F. Dyuzhikov, in this regard, four functions of insurance can be distinguished: loss compensation function, social, investment and preventive .
Other authors (for example, T.A. Yakovleva and O.Yu. Shevchenko) have the point of view that there are three main functions of insurance: preventive, savings (according to the author, this function can be correlated with social), risk (loss compensation function ) . In addition to these functions, these authors point out that a number of other works highlight insurance functions such as control, credit and investment.
Through the insurance mechanism, a significant share of losses resulting from fires, natural disasters, man-made disasters and other random events of an unfavorable nature is compensated. Thus, insurance performs the function of compensation for losses.
The compensation received from insurance companies is usually used for the restoration (and, with the use of additional funds from policyholders, for the modernization) of lost and damaged material assets, which ultimately contributes to economic growth.
Insurance is widely used to solve social problems of society, i.e. it performs a social function. This role of insurance is manifested in several aspects. First of all, insurance organizations provide great assistance to the insured in case of loss of ability to work and the onset of disability as a result of accidents and illnesses. Insurance companies finance the treatment and rehabilitation of victims and compensate the latter for lost income. In the event of the death of the insured, his relatives are paid funds that allow them not to reduce the achieved standard of living. Payments to citizens of compensation for lost or damaged property also help maintain the level of material wealth they have achieved. Thus, insurance plays the role of a stabilizer of the standard of living of citizens.
In recent years, the role of insurance in pension provision has increased significantly. Declining birth rates and increasing life expectancy in developed countries have led to a decrease in the working population and an increase in the number of retirees. Many countries experience difficulties in implementing public pension programs based on the pay-as-you-go principle. Government spending on pensions is already too high, and further growth is simply impossible. In the current situation, pension insurance contracts concluded at the expense of citizens or their employers, on the one hand, increase the standard of living of pensioners, and on the other, reduce the financial burden on the state .
Further, insurance contributes to the realization of the savings needs of the population. Citizens cannot make many large expenses (for example, related to the purchase of housing, a car, education costs) from their current income, so they need to save money. One of the ways to organize such savings is to conclude life insurance contracts. In addition, insurance organizations are employers, solving the problem of unemployment. In countries with a developed insurance market, up to 1% of the working population is employed in insurance.
With the help of insurance, savings are mobilized for the development of the national economy. Thus, insurance performs an investment function. It is common knowledge that countries that have been able to save more tend to grow faster. Unlike commercial banks, which specialize in raising funds for a short period, insurance organizations (especially life insurance companies) have funds received in the form of insurance premiums for a long time (10 years or more). In this regard, in economically developed countries, insurance companies are the largest investors. The stable inflow of funds and long-term obligations of insurance organizations made them an ideal source of “long-term money” for business and government.
With the help of insurance, the probability of the occurrence of various unfavorable events is reduced and losses from such events are reduced, thereby insurance performs a preventive function. This insurance function manifests itself in two aspects.
Firstly, insurance organizations use part of the payments received under insurance contracts to form special reserves for preventive measures. Funds from these reserves are used to finance measures aimed at preventing accidents, fires, natural disasters, accidents, and diseases.
Secondly, the preventive function of insurance is manifested in the fact that insurance organizations require their clients to take certain measures themselves aimed at reducing the likelihood of the occurrence of events against which insurance contracts are concluded.
Chapter 2 The role of insurance in the socio-economic development of Russia
2.1 The role of insurance in regulating socio-economic relations of the Russian Federation
The form of organization of insurance relations is understood as the organizational and legal conditions established by the state for managing risks of varying scale, devastatingness and social significance. Such conditions, as established by national law, include:
mandatory or voluntary conclusion of insurance contracts;
insurance coverage;
establishing insurance conditions and insurance rates;
a list of insured events, upon the occurrence of which the obligation to make an insurance payment arises;
appointment of a special entity providing insurance or granting the policyholder the right to select entities from among those with state permission to conduct insurance operations.
Based on the identified criteria, it is possible to justify the following system of forms of organizing insurance relations in the national economy (Fig. 2.1).
Figure 2.1 - Scheme of the form of organization of insurance relations
Let us consider in detail the characteristic features of each of the identified forms of organizing insurance relations:
(1) compulsory social insurance - is a form of insurance related to the management of macroeconomic social and demographic risks in society.
(2) voluntary social insurance - a form of insurance provided for in Art. 39 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation (until now, this form of insurance remains unaccounted for in scientific classifications).
The general criterion for distinguishing the above forms of social insurance is their use in relation to social risk management. In accordance with paragraph 7 of the Guidelines included in the Recommendations of the International Labor Organization, such standard social risks are: illness, motherhood, disability, old age, death of the breadwinner, unemployment, expenses due to emergency circumstances, work injury.
(3) compulsory insurance other than social insurance is a form of insurance related to the management of macroeconomic social risks in certain areas of public life.
Using this form of organizing insurance relations, the state, while establishing compulsory and universal insurance for certain categories of citizens or business entities, defining the basic conditions of insurance and the grounds for payment of insurance amounts, nevertheless entrusts the organization of insurance relations to a wide range of insurance organizations that meet the requirements, also established by the state (in particular, licenses for the right to conduct a certain type of compulsory insurance).
In the Russian Federation, the list of types of compulsory insurance is quite wide - more than 40 federal laws and legislative acts establish in one form or another the compulsory nature of certain types of insurance, the most important among them are compulsory insurance of military personnel, compulsory insurance of civil servants in the performance of official duties, compulsory insurance of judges, compulsory insurance" of professional liability when carrying out notarial activities, compulsory personal insurance of passengers.
(4) voluntary insurance other than social insurance is a form of managing microeconomic risks inherent in the economic activities of individual business entities, as well as the activities and lives of citizens in society.
Voluntariness in insurance means that the transfer of risk from the policyholder to the insurer in accordance with the terms of the insurance contract occurs on the basis of the free will of the parties and their full agreement on the essential terms of the insurance contract.
2.2 The role of insurance in the formation of investment capital in the Russian Federation
In the global economy, insurance companies are among the largest collective investors and take an active investment position. This kind of activity directly depends on the dynamics of the insurance market as a whole. If it is positive, then the insurance services segment accumulates an impressive amount of resources, and the investment activities of insurers reduce the burden on the state budget (special pension programs) and make insurers a source of long-term resources.
In Russia, there is an extensive development of the insurance industry. Companies are focused primarily on making profits from clients by inflating tariffs and tightening the terms of insurance payments, rather than on investing - using their own resources. Meanwhile, in world practice, investment activity is the most important source of income for insurance organizations, after insurance. .
However, over the past few years, the Russian Federation has been actively involved in global business processes, which will force the insurance market, in particular insurance companies, as investors, to become more active.
The latest innovation was the inclusion of insurance organizations in the list of qualified investors by force of law, and, as a result, their admission to investing in securities with limited circulation. Such assets are potentially highly profitable, but investing in them involves high risks. .
According to Russian legislation, insurers can place their own funds and insurance reserves. The share of borrowed funds largely prevails over own funds, so it is interesting to consider investing in insurance reserves. The process of investing raised funds is regulated by the Rules for the placement of insurance reserves by insurers.
Assets accepted to cover insurance reserves must satisfy the conditions of diversification, liquidity, repayment, and only lastly (in the opinion of the regulator) profitability. Insurance reserves must be sufficient to fulfill obligations under insurance, coinsurance, and reinsurance contracts. Therefore, the legislator has established strict requirements for their composition and structure.
However, in line with the reforms and primarily in connection with the recognition of insurance companies as qualified investors, new opportunities are opening up for them.
Probably, new prospects will affect the list of assets available for investment and limits on them (structures).
Despite the fact that the composition of assets provided for covering insurance reserves includes instruments that are not available, for example, to non-state pension funds, it needs to be expanded.
First of all, this concerns the inclusion of shares of closed-end mutual investment funds in the list of assets. The design of a closed-end mutual investment fund will allow for profitable investment indirectly in:
real estate;
venture projects;
real sector of the economy;
In foreign practice, investing in undervalued assets is common. Given the foreign experience, there may be an opportunity to invest in funds that invest in shares of small and mid-cap companies preparing to conduct an initial public offering (pre-IPO). It seems that the mechanism of closed mutual investment funds (new categories of funds in the Russian collective investment market) will be used.
Of course, to invest in projects designed for a long term, you need “long-term” money, so the priority inclusion of shares of closed mutual funds in the list of assets available for investment of insurance reserves is possible in relation to life insurance reserves.
When carrying out reforms, current market conditions are always taken into account. In an unstable environment, instruments that help hedge risks attract attention. Taking into account the qualifications of investors, it is permissible to include derivative financial instruments (derivatives) in the “investment list”.
Insurance companies can directly invest in securities, precious metals, and real estate; in connection with the provided list of instruments, special attention is paid to the structuring of assets.
If we compare the structure of assets accepted to cover the insurance reserves of Russian and foreign insurance companies, it is clear that the main share in the assets of Russian insurers is occupied by bank bills, deposits, reinsurers' shares in reserves and government securities; while foreign insurers invest in bonds and shares, ensuring the flow of investment resources into the economy and generating income.
Of course, in order to increase investment limits, you need to clearly predict the demand for invested resources. First of all, such a calculation is possible with long-term life insurance reserves.
It is likely that there will be a reduction in restrictions on investing in shares of mutual funds, on direct investments in the real estate market (it is less volatile than the stock market), in precious metals, and mortgage-backed securities.
The placement of insurance reserve funds can be carried out by the insurer independently, as well as by transferring part of the funds (up to 20% of the total amount of insurance reserves) to individual trust management. At the same time, there is no possibility of transferring funds for management to non-residents.
Since investment activity is not core for insurance organizations, it is reasonable to set the share of insurance reserves available for transfer to more than 20% .
In addition, the positive dynamics of the insurance market and, as a consequence of the investment activities of insurers, require the development of consulting in this segment.
The vector of development of the Russian economy is aimed at stimulating the activities of, first of all, large (institutional) investors. There is no fundamental difference between the activities of investment institutions (Banks, non-state pension funds, insurance companies and others) in the field of placement of funds.
However, the requirements for the placement of funds are differentiated, including the intensity of reform in this industry. The activity of investing funds from insurance reserves has its own specifics - the period of demand for insurance reserves other than life insurance is less predictable than, for example, the need to pay out funds from non-state pension funds. The Ministry of Finance recognizes the need for reforms to provide insurance organizations with new investment opportunities, but takes a conservative position on the timing. The regulator, represented by the Federal Service for Financial Markets, provided the basis for further reforms by including insurers in the list of qualified investors by force of law; the intensification of the process remains in the hands of the insurers themselves .
2.3 The role of insurance in the development of the national economy of the Russian Federation
The development of market relations, when the commodity producer begins to act at his own peril and risk, according to his own plan and bears responsibility for this, increases the role and importance of insurance. At the same time, along with the traditional purpose - providing protection from natural disasters (earthquakes, floods, storms, etc.), random events of a technical and technological nature (fires, accidents, explosions, etc.) - losses from various criminogenic phenomena are increasingly becoming the object of insurance (theft, robbery, vehicle theft, etc.). Enterprises and organizations of various forms of ownership, acting as insurers, feel the need not only for compensation for damage expressed in the loss or damage of fixed assets and working capital, but also for compensation for lost profits or additional expenses due to forced downtime of enterprises (irregular supplies of raw materials , insolvency of wholesale buyers).
The changes also affect the sphere of property and personal insurance of citizens, which is directly related to the economic interests of the population. The ratio of long-term and short-term insurance contracts, the combination of risk, precautionary and savings terms of insurance, the level of bank interest on the reserve of contributions for life insurance contracts, taking into account price trends and the implementation of anti-inflationary measures with the transition to a market economy inevitably become the subject of insurance policy. The supply of insurance services is increasing. The insurance market is gradually being formed. Priority is given to voluntary types of insurance, although in certain areas compulsory insurance is maintained or even introduced (for example, medical, military accident insurance, etc.) .
In the market economy of the Russian Federation at the stage of its formation, insurance acts, on the one hand, as a means of protecting business and people’s well-being, and on the other, as an income-generating activity. The sources of profit for an insurance organization are income from insurance activities, from investments of temporarily free funds in objects of production and non-production areas of activity, shares of enterprises, bank deposits, securities, etc.
Insurance serves as an important factor in stimulating production activity and ensuring a healthy lifestyle, creates new incentives for increasing labor productivity in accordance with personal contribution to production and ensuring one’s own well-being.
Chapter 3 Assessment of the state and prospects for the development of insurance in the Russian economy
3.1 Assessment of the development of the modern insurance market in the Russian Federation
The first half of 2008 in the Russian insurance market was marked by two trends: the equalization of tariffs and a decrease in the growth rate of insurance related to credit products. It is not market share that is gradually coming to the fore for insurers, but the sustainability and profitability of the business. .
According to the results of the first half of 2008, Russian insurance companies collected 293 billion rubles in direct insurance premiums (without compulsory medical insurance), which is 44 billion rubles or 17.6% more than in the same period of the previous year. The growth in contributions has slowed down this year - in the first half of 2007 it was 3.1 percentage points higher. The largest segments of the Russian insurance market continue to be motor hull insurance (according to a study by the Expert RA rating agency, the volume of premiums collected for this type of insurance in the first half of 2008 amounted to 76.4 billion rubles), VHI (53. 0 billion rubles), compulsory motor liability insurance (39.1 billion rubles) and insurance of property of legal entities against fire and other risks (31.3 billion rubles) .
Three of the four main types of insurance for the Russian market showed a decrease in the growth rate of insurance premiums: the growth rate of insurance premiums in the first half of 2008 decreased by 5.6 percentage points. compared to the first half of 2007 and amounted to 35.1%, for compulsory motor liability insurance the decrease was 4.8 percentage points to a level of 12.9%. While for retail types we are talking about a slowdown in growth rates, in the property insurance of legal entities there was an absolute decrease in the amount of collected insurance premiums by 6.3% (in the first half of 2007 there was an increase of 5.6%). The growth rate increased only in VHI - from 15.6 to 23.4% .
Minimal growth in premiums for fire risks and cargo is a general trend in the corporate insurance segment. The main factors negatively affecting the performance of this segment are the reduction of tariffs - both due to tougher competition and cheaper reinsurance protection in Western companies - as well as the withdrawal of a significant volume of schemes from the market .
While the reduction in premiums for property insurance of legal entities is only a continuation of a trend that formed quite a long time ago, the “slowdown” of car insurance is a new and very unfavorable phenomenon for Russian insurers, caused by reasons external to the insurance market. The high growth rates of auto hull insurance are mainly associated with the practice of imputed insurance for car loans, which experienced a real boom about a year ago. The consequences of the global financial crisis for the Russian economy were expressed, among others, in a decrease in the growth rate of loans issued by Russian banks. As a result, the growth of credit auto insurance also slowed down.
Expectations regarding further prospects for the growth of auto insurance among most market participants are quite pessimistic. Hypertrophied wage growth, outpacing the growth rate of labor productivity and due to labor shortages, cannot last long, and accelerating inflation will force people to postpone both expensive purchases and loans due to limited funds for the purchase of essential goods. Accordingly, changes in the consumption structure will lead to a decrease in the growth rate of auto insurance .
Russian insurers expect a decrease in the growth rate of premiums for comprehensive insurance of cars purchased on credit at the end of this year and the beginning of next year. The decline in the growth rate of industrial production, the outflow of foreign investment, as well as the reduction in the growth rate of real incomes of the population create additional preconditions for a possible slowdown in the development of insurance next year.
The growth rate of the VHI market is also very low. The reason is that the state has still not been able to clearly define what compulsory health insurance is: social security or an element of insurance. That is why it is impossible to give an accurate forecast of the VHI market: will it be a separate component not related to compulsory medicine, or will it be a good addition to the compulsory health insurance program.
In the first half of 2008, the trends of last year, associated with a steady increase in the unprofitability of motor insurance (both compulsory motor liability insurance and comprehensive insurance), continued and intensified.
Compulsory civil liability insurance continues to drag down market indicators - unprofitability in many regions of Russia has long overcome the critical level, and some insurers are making it difficult for consumers to purchase policies by moving points of sale of MTPL policies to hard-to-reach places and without attracting special attention from car owners to the possibility of insuring themselves under MTPL. they have. As many insurers note, given the extent to which this type of insurance covers the population of the country and its obligatory nature for car owners, the problem from an economic one is beginning to acquire a political nature. Due to the mandatory nature of the established tariffs for compulsory motor liability insurance, only the state can resolve the issue.
A new phenomenon for domestic insurance was the first public recognition of auto hull insurance losses by some leading insurers. In reality, this type of insurance turned out to be unprofitable for a much larger number of companies than was announced to the market. This especially applies to motor hull insurance through car dealerships.
In motor insurance, the financial result is reduced, mainly not due to inadequate tariffs, but because of exorbitant commission fees to agents. The highest demand comes from non-insurance intermediaries, primarily from car dealerships, which dictate their terms to insurers. According to many market participants, commissions have reached such high values that their further increase or even maintaining at the same level will make auto insurance activities completely unprofitable. As a result, we can expect the beginning of a gradual reduction in commission fees for intermediaries .
The reason for this situation is that many insurance companies, in the process of preparing for sale to the Western market, are striving to develop sales networks and increase the volume of insurance premiums in the simplest way - through price dumping and increasing the commission of insurance intermediaries. In conditions when the share of investment income of Russian insurance companies is extremely low and the value of the combined loss ratio is growing, insurers need to increase the profitability of their business.
The first half of 2008 showed that most insurance companies began an internal transformation - a transition from targets aimed at capturing the largest possible market share at any cost, to a focus on other results. The obvious thesis that the insurance business, like any other, must make a profit, is gradually becoming the goal of an increasing number of insurers. As a result, the process of tariff equalization began in the market - bringing different companies closer to the market average level.
The main trend of last year is that many insurance companies are choosing not in favor of “tariff wars” and dumping operations, but in favor of the reliability of the company, its reserves, and the stability of the insurance portfolio. In the first half of 2008, this trend became even more obvious: it became clear that this was a pattern and not a random “spike.” Another obvious trend is directly related to the consolidation of new methods of fighting for clients in the market - the pursuit of a client-centric policy modeled on Western companies. In addition to the size of insurance rates, the quality of service will be increasingly important to the client. .
3.2 Difficulties and prospects for the development of the insurance business in the Russian Federation
The Russian insurance market is growing rapidly - real premiums (excluding tax-saving schemes, which are not actually insurance) are increasing annually at a rate exceeding 30%. The rapid growth of insurance premiums can lead to the blissful illusion that it will continue to be the same. Meanwhile, a significant number of insurers do not see long-term prospects for their development; they solve exclusively short-term problems, declaring as their goal the extensive growth of premiums and market share through dumping and sale in the medium term to a foreign investor. The low level of capitalization of Russian insurers and the weakness of the national reinsurance market contribute to the formation of dependence of the country's economy on global financial markets and the gradual transformation of Russian insurance companies into intermediaries .
Such a development of events will inevitably lead to the fact that the insurance industry of our country will not only lose its sovereignty, but also will not be able to satisfy the increasing needs of the Russian economy for insurance protection. Such growth is not favorable for the Russian economy.
The economy of the Russian Federation needs a powerful national insurance market that would develop through voluntary types of insurance and non-price competition, the foundation of stability and successful dynamics of which would be a significant capitalization of domestic insurers, many times higher than the current state. The steps necessary to achieve this model are formulated in the concept of development of the insurance market as part of the financial system of the Russian Federation, developed by the rating agency "Expert RA" together with the Association of Regional Banks "Russia" .
The development of an insurance market capable of meeting all the needs of the growing and increasingly complex Russian economy is possible only if two key principles embedded in the concept are implemented: insurance of assets at their real value and the establishment of a single economic cost of living for compensation for harm to life and health for all types of insurance.
The concept of economic cost of living should be unified and defined depending on the average level of wages, expenses for education and medical care. The insurance system must provide truly worthy compensation for harm to the life and health of every person, regardless of the type of insurance under which the insured event occurred. The fair value of assets in an economy should be calculated based on fair value, such as the discounted value of the future cash flows generated by those assets. Undercapitalized assets or completely withdrawn from circulation (in Russia these include land, forest resources, partly real estate, and intellectual property) will be properly formalized in terms of specification of property rights and will become the object of financial transactions. In other words, they will become part of the economy, they will be able to be the subject of collateral, the basis for issuing securities, they will become liquid, and they will need to be insured accordingly at market value .
The insurance market of the Russian Federation must be open, but at the same time maintain its sovereignty. The insurance market is much more important than, for example, the car manufacturing segment. There will be no domestic automakers - this will have a negative impact on the country's economy. If we lose the national insurance market, Russia will lose competitive advantages in other areas and increase systemic risks in the economy. A powerful insurance market is possible with the emergence in Russia of truly large national players - insurance companies that can effectively compete with foreign insurers. Without a significant increase in capitalization, and in the near future, the sovereignty of the insurance market will be lost. According to the Bank of Russia, the own funds of Russian insurers in 2007 amounted to 208.3 billion rubles ($8.5 billion), having decreased by 6.4% compared to 2006. .
In order to accept the increasing volume of risks and withstand increasing competition, insurance companies must significantly increase their own retention by increasing their own funds. The total authorized capital of Russian insurance companies by 2020 should reach at least 750 billion rubles in 2007 prices ($30.6 billion), that is, grow by 4.4 times, and the value of the total assets of the industry in 2020 should be at least 3. 3 trillion rubles in 2007 prices ($134.4 billion) versus 675 billion rubles ($25.6 billion) at the beginning of 2007 .
The Russian reinsurance market should become a large regional reinsurance center, focusing its development on a significant increase in the role of specialized reinsurers. Large national players (partially supported by the state) should appear on the market, capable of taking on very significant risks. Among the most important tasks of the state is the elimination of institutional restrictions on accepting contributions for incoming reinsurance from abroad. In such conditions, incoming reinsurance premiums will grow at an accelerated pace, up to 750 billion rubles ($30.6 billion) in 2020 .
Rosgosstrakh (RGS) predicts the growth rate of the insurance market in 2008-2009 at the level of 25-30%. Already in 2008, the total volume of collected premiums, according to the RGS analytical report, will slightly exceed 1 trillion rubles, and in 2009 it will amount to 1.3 trillion rubles. Top managers of other insurance companies believe that the insurance market will develop according to a more restrained scenario .
Insurance premium collections will continue to increase in 2009-2010; the growth of insurance premiums in 2009, despite the crisis, will be at least 15-20%. This opinion was expressed to the Interfax-AFI agency by the head of the Center for Strategic Analysis of Rosgosstrakh, Alexey Zubets. .
The head of the Federal Insurance Supervision Service, Ilya Lomakin-Rumyantsev, said that the insurance community should be prepared for a drop in premium collections next year by 25% and even 50% .
3.3 Measures to improve insurance in the Russian Federation
To ensure continuity of production and maintain social stability in society, it is necessary to minimize the level of underinsurance of risks in the economy. By 2020, the level of insurance coverage for risks traditionally subject to insurance in developed countries should approach 100%, and the total market volume should reach 3 trillion rubles ($122.2 billion) in 2007 prices, or 4% of GDP. Insurance, instead of creating extra-budgetary funds or directly financing the elimination of the consequences of man-made or natural disasters, accidents and other events, is the only way to reduce the burden on public finances while increasing the efficiency of risk management .
In the future, the basis of the Russian insurance market should be voluntary insurance. It is necessary to revise the operating principles of existing types of compulsory insurance in favor of market mechanisms, and the role of compulsory types of insurance in the development of the Russian insurance market should gradually decrease. The share of compulsory types of insurance in total insurance premiums by 2020 should not exceed 25%. However, this does not mean that now we should completely abandon the new mandatory types. For example, liability insurance for operators of particularly dangerous facilities or some other types of liability insurance are precisely those cases where compulsory insurance is appropriate. In the first stage, these types will become the locomotive of development, and then changes and reforms will be necessary to improve efficiency. Of course, imputed insurance, due to its greater flexibility, is a more effective way to ensure the protection of the interests of third parties compared to legally regulated compulsory types of insurance. Replacing licensing and certification of products with imputed types of insurance will also solve the problem of improving the quality of work and services. The most important issue here is to work out the calculation of tariffs and conditions so as not to repeat the mistakes of the OSAGO system .
The growing role of insurance as a necessary condition for the normal functioning of the entire Russian economy should be accompanied by increased requirements for the reliability and transparency of Russian insurance companies. The level of adequacy of insurers' own funds should be assessed on the basis of the Solvency II principles developed by the International Association of Insurance Supervisors. In addition, it is necessary to prepare and implement risk management standards into the practice of insurers, including an actuarial audit and holding investment committees when placing insurance reserves (management of market, credit risks, liquidity risks). Also, within two to three years, it is necessary to introduce requirements for reporting according to IFRS and expand the requirements for financial stability and reliability ratings in the requirements of tenders and accreditations .
Competition between players in the insurance market should occur primarily through non-price methods; the market needs to get rid of dumping, inflated agent commissions and kickbacks. Much depends on the companies themselves. And the FAS, in turn, can more actively combat precisely such manifestations of unfair competition and, on the contrary, somewhat soften its position regarding agreements between insurers and banks .
Conclusion
Insurance can be defined as a set of redistributive relations of a closed circle of its participants regarding the formation, through their contributions, of a target insurance fund intended to compensate for possible damage to the property of legal entities and individuals, as well as to provide material support for citizens upon the occurrence of certain events in their lives.
In countries with developed market economies, insurance plays an important and multifaceted role. In this regard, four functions of insurance can be distinguished: indemnity, social, investment and preventive.
Economic and social relations in society as a whole, within an individual economic entity or citizen and his family, face risks of varying degrees and breadth of impact, sources and destructiveness. The listed criteria predetermine the use of various forms of organizing insurance relations (forms of insurance). The combination of various forms of insurance for the purpose of risk management at the macro- and microeconomic levels ensures the integrity of the national insurance system.
The domestic insurance business is distinguished by a number of features that distinguish it from its foreign colleagues, therefore, schemes for interaction between insurance organizations and the stock market, tested abroad, usually have their own characteristics or are simply absent in Russia.
Currently, the access of foreign insurers both in terms of creating subsidiaries on the territory of the Russian Federation and in terms of acquiring shares of existing Russian insurance organizations is practically unlimited. In the near future, the problem will become even more pressing and will become especially aggravated as Russia joins the WTO. A massive foreign “offensive” will force the domestic insurance community to follow international business standards, including activities with financial instruments on the stock market.
The transition of the economy of the Russian Federation from an administrative-command economy to a market economy ensures a significant increase in the role of insurance in social reproduction, significantly expands the scope of insurance services and the development of alternatives to state insurance. Under the command-administrative system of managing the national economy, the dominant role of state property and the weak economic responsibility of managers and work collectives for its safety, insurance could not get its rightful place in the national economy of the Russian Federation and public relations.
The development of market relations, when the commodity producer begins to act at his own peril and risk, according to his own plan and bears responsibility for this, increases the role and importance of insurance.
The Russian insurance market is growing rapidly - real premiums (excluding tax-saving schemes, which are not actually insurance) are increasing annually at a rate exceeding 30%. The rapid growth of insurance premiums can lead to the blissful illusion that it will continue to be the same. Meanwhile, a significant number of insurers do not see long-term prospects for their development; they solve exclusively short-term problems, declaring as their goal the extensive growth of premiums and market share through dumping and sale in the medium term to a foreign investor. The low level of capitalization of Russian insurers and the weakness of the national reinsurance market contribute to the formation of dependence of the country's economy on global financial markets and the gradual transformation of Russian insurance companies into intermediaries.
The economy of the Russian Federation needs a powerful national insurance market that would develop through voluntary types of insurance and non-price competition, the foundation of stability and successful dynamics of which would be a significant capitalization of domestic insurers, many times higher than the current state.
To ensure continuity of production and maintain social stability in society, it is necessary to minimize the level of underinsurance of risks in the economy.
In the future, the basis of the Russian insurance market should be voluntary insurance.
Reform of compulsory motor liability insurance should follow the path of tariff liberalization: through the transfer of functions for setting tariffs for compulsory motor liability insurance to a self-regulatory organization of market participants (with an annual revision of tariffs) to a complete transition to a market mechanism for setting tariffs. Liability limits under compulsory motor insurance must be calculated taking into account the economic cost of living.
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