During a meeting organized by the Insurance and Annuity Regulatory and Supervisory Agency (SEDDK), SEDDK President Mehmet Akif Eroğlu stated that the February 6 earthquake was a milestone for them and that insurance companies experienced many things in this period.
Eroğlu, stating that reinsurance is a very important topic for the insurance sector in this period, said, "All companies are currently questioning their reinsurance capacities. Are reinsurance policies appropriate or not? No one expected such a disaster, but we experienced and saw it. However, our sector has sufficient solvency with both reinsurance protection and equity.
There are lessons we need to learn from this disaster as the insurance industry. With this disaster, we are working on how we can create awareness as a sector because we are in a period where everyone's awareness is very high. In such an environment, we need to be able to talk a lot about insurance and make self-criticism and we need to talk about how to rehabilitate this system better."
Underlining that the issue of insurance is an essential issue for Turkey with the earthquake disaster experienced, Eroğlu said, "We have seen very clearly in this disaster covering 11 provinces that if we do not increase insurance penetration, we are carrying risks at the financially sustainable point of the country. We absolutely need to activate the insurance. We need to increase awareness by touching the real sector with our urgent, our distribution channel, our economic media."
He said an earthquake research commission needs to be established
Eroğlu, stating that SMEs have 50 percent insurance, continued as follows;
"Factories in the real sector do not have disaster and sustainability plans. Therefore, we need to turn this work into a national mobilization. Turkey has a lot of work to do in the field of insurance, especially in the commercial segment. TCIP has paid 13.5 billion so far with the current implementation in the earthquake zone. TCIP has no claim to cover the market value of every house. The working principle of TCIP is that these houses cover the construction costs. As SEDDK, we updated the coverage amounts 3 months before the earthquake.
We increased the price of the square meter to be paid in November by 100 percent from TL 1,508 to TL 3,016, but the event is not only the premium amounts. We are addressing this situation more extensively. We urgently need to establish an earthquake investigation commission. In it there should be the Insurance Association of Turkey, brokers, academics and industrialists in the commercial segment. We need to translate the lessons we learned from this earthquake into politics."
We will integrate the land registry system to prevent small-square meters
Stating that they will make title deed integration to prevent low square meters in insurances and that infrastructure works are continuing, Eroğlu said, "We need to offer people a reasonable construction cost while doing this, but this cannot be too high. When you raise it too high, it is forgotten after 6 months and the citizen starts to see it as a cost, so we need to complete it with a discretionary fire. As SEDDK, we deal with TCIP and discretionary insurance together. We have started to work to establish a holistic system in this area."
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