Lebanon's insurance companies might see a 20% drop in insurance premiums if they were to start charging their customers in fresh US dollars or according to black market rates, the former president of the Insurance Association Elie Torbey has said.
The Association of Insurance Companies in Lebanon (ACAL) has elected a new board, with Mr Elie Nasnas, general manager of AXA Middle East as chairman of the association and Mr Fateh Bekdache, AROPE Insurance's chairman & CEO as the body's vice chairman.
Some insurance companies struggling to re-assert themselves and the Association of Insurance Companies in Lebanon (ACAL) has begun to strategise how to rebuild the sector's public image, which took a beating last year.
Insurers in Lebanon have received at least 16,000 claims for estimated losses of close to $1.1bn from last year's 4 August Beirut Port explosions, according to the latest report released in February by the Insurance Control Commission (ICC), Lebanon's insurance regulator. Only $60m of this total has been settled so far.
Car dealers in Lebanon sold 62 new passenger cars in the first two months of 2021, constituting a drop of 96.7% from 1,876 cars sold in the corresponding period of 2020, according to figures released by the Association of Automobile Importers (AIA).
Non-life premiums generated by 38 insurance companies operating in the country reached $1.16bn in 2020, constituting an increase of 2% from $1.13bn produced by 44 insurers in 2019, according to the annual survey by Al-Bayan magazine of the insurance sector in Lebanon.
Insurance companies have paid only 3.6% of about $1.5bn in insured losses arising from last year's 4 August explosion in Beirut Port, as they await the results of investigations into the incident.
The massive 4 August 2020 explosion in the Port of Beirut has exacerbated the deterioration in socioeconomic conditions of the people living in the affected areas, according to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) which conducted a rapid assessment of the aftermath of the blast so as to examine the socioeconomic impact of the incident on households, business owners and on the workforce in the affected areas.
The Insurance Control Commission (ICC) is urging insurance companies to settle claims related to the 4 August Beirut Port blast for the most vulnerable insured clients, without waiting for the findings of a judicial investigation into the destructive explosion, according to a statement posted on the website of the Ministry of the Economy and Trade.
Figures released by the Insurance Control Commission show that the gross written premiums of 50 licensed insurance companies in Lebanon reached $1.19bn in the first nine months of 2020, constituting a decrease of 5.9% from $1.26bn in the corresponding period in 2019.