The company leaves the Ukrainian insurance market

The Italian insurance company Assicurazioni Generali is selling its last asset in Ukraine - the Generali Life Insurance company. Now their business partner, the PPF Group founded by Czech billionaire Peter Kellner, will develop the life insurer. According to experts, General Life Insurance's position in the market will depend on the owner's ability to retain corporate clients.

The Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine on Thursday allowed the Dutch company Derinexum B.V. acquire over 50% of the insurance company Generali Life Insurance. Now 100% of the shares of the insurance company belong to the Generali PPF holding. “There will be a formal change of shareholders. The company’s strategy will remain the same: we will continue to work in the corporate segment and will continue to work closely with Generali, which will remain our strategic partner - we will reinsure our risks with it,” the general director of IC Generali Insurance told Kommersant. life" Dmitry Dubina. The final beneficiary of the insurance company will be PPF Group, he confirmed and clarified: “We plan to complete the rebranding by the end of March.” Back in April 2011 - five years after entering Ukraine - Generali Group sold 52% of the shares of the risky Generali Garant Insurance Company to its former owners.

The deal is due to the fact that PPF Group is selling 49% of the Generali PPF holding to the Italian IC Assicurazioni Generali, which owns 51% of the holding, for 2.52 billion euros. Generali will now buy a 25% stake in Generali PPF for 1.29 billion euros, and will transfer another 1.23 billion euros for 24% of the shares to PPF Group by December 31, 2014. At the same time, PPF Group will buy out the holding’s insurance assets in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and part of the assets in Russia for 80 million euros. 38.5% of the shares of the Russian insurance company Ingosstrakh will be assigned to Generali. “We will retain the key insurance companies in the CIS countries,” said PPF Group founder Peter Kellner in January.

Generali Life Insurance has been operating since 2006. At the end of 2011, the company collected UAH 6.5 million, taking 20th place in terms of premiums in the Insurance Top rating. A change of owner will not make the company more aggressive, market participants believe. “An aggressive policy is being pursued either by foreign owners who have identified the Ukrainian market as a priority, or by strategic investors - investment funds that count on the successful sale of an asset in the future,” notes Ruslan Vasyutin, Chairman of the Board of Jupiter Insurance Company. Unlike Generali, which is one of the largest insurance groups in Europe, PPF Group operates in a number of industries: banking and insurance, energy, agriculture, mining, retail, real estate.

For now, the main task of PPF Group in Ukraine is to maintain a pool of clients. “Generali Life Insurance works mainly with international corporations, whose parent structures have been cooperating with the Italian Assicurazioni Generali for many years. How they will react to the change of owners is still unclear,” says Rustem Galiev, deputy chairman of the board of Oranta Life Insurance Company. The experience of working in the financial market of Ukraine during the crisis was not entirely successful for PPF Group: at the end of 2010, the group decided to sell the Ukrainian Home Credit Bank it owned to the international financial group Platinum. “Life insurance is now a strategic asset. The very fact that PPF Group remains a shareholder is important. The group has a diversified business in Ukraine; in the future, life insurance can become a source of long-term money for it,” said Natalya Gudyma, president of the League of Insurance Organizations.

Victoria Rudenko

Generali says goodbye to life