STAGNATION OF THE INSURANCE MARKET OF THE SOUTH-EASTERN EUROPE

Many political, economical and demographic factors influenced the region of the South-Eastern Europe (SEE) in recent years, making an indirect influence on the insurance sector of the region. Following the other fields of economy, stagnation with slight increase of the insurance sector in most of the countries, except Greece where premium volume significantly decreased, made insurance market of the region still far behind the Western Europe level. The experience from the last decade is not providing much better expectation especially if we consider the process of legal and institutional reform which is very slow in some countries. Based on official data, the paper shows a large difference of the agregate indicators of insurance development levels between the SEE region and countries that are members of European Insurers Association (Insurance Europe), but also among countries of the SEE depending on their macroeconomic environment and level of development of financial sector. The analysis shows that, for the countries that recently joined the European Union, stagnation of the sector is more evident than in the non-member countries where the premium volume is increasing. It looks like the first group of countries reached the limits considering their economies, while the second group of countries still has potential for the market growth. Therefore, the reasons for such trendsshould be analysed considering some internal changes on the market or some other macroeconomic issues. The long-term comparative analysis based on various criteria and data from the period 2006-2015 will be used in the paper with the aim to recognize the main obstacles for SEE markets development and the expectations for the markets in the following years.