Insurers have come to pay hundreds of thousand euros for personal injury claims

Personal injury payments in the wake of car accidents have registered exponential growth in recent years, with insurers getting to settle claims as high as hundreds of thousands of euros, which is putting additional upward pressure on auto liability (RCA) policy tariffs.

Omniasig, a top company on the domestic market controlled by Austria's Vienna Insurance, settled a 1.34m RON (around 230,000 euros) claim this year in the wake of a car accident. Generali, a top ten insurer in terms of gross underwritten premiums, settled a 55,000-euro claim.
Payments for personal injury cases on the overall market last year amounted to 67m RON (16m euros) up 66% year-on-year, according to the latest data published by the Insurance Supervision Commission (CSA).
The rising frequency and value of claims settled on the basis of RCA policies comes as insurers are announcing cuts or slight increases at most in RCA policy tariffs in 2011 against this year. However, as claims for personal injury are rising in value in Romania as well, pressures for raising RCA tariffs are likely to mount.