10 years after the earthquake that shattered Turkey
10 years after the earthquake in Izmit (Marmara), one of the biggest disasters that have marked the recent history of Turkey and of the former Byzantine capital Istanbul, the Government and insurers are working to change the system of mandatory household insurance. This is the conclusion of the International Istanbul Insurance Conference, event organized in premiere by STD - Insurance Practitioners’ Society, with support from Istanbul Underwriting Center.
Considered to be a success, DASK or TCIP - Turkish Catastrophe Insurance Pool was created at high speed, shortly after the earthquake in 1999. Proposed changes would amend what may be the lowest point of the system and would introduce penalties for non-conclusion or refusal to renew mandatory policies.
The amendment was requested by Turkish insurers years ago, given that legal issues made it so that mandatory insurance penetration does not exceed 25-30% of all buildings for housing purposes.
The big reinsurers, such as SWISS Re or MUNICH Re, are saying that TCIP is still far from its real potential, since in Turkey the mandatory insurance penetration is relatively low. Interestingly, however, they have attracted public attention of the insurers present at the International Istanbul Insurance Conference, to the fact that they should give up attempts to find the guilty parts within the industry for the inevitable legal challenges, condescending attitudes and to the fact that it must be rediscovered the unity of opinion that made TCIP to become a reality in record time.
We are currently working on a series of amendments of the specific TCIP legislation. The system is certainly perfectable, but it represents a real success for all parties involved, being taken as a model for many countries, said the World Bank representative at the Conference - institution involved in the design of TCIP. They believe that the pool could never have been formed so quickly without the dramatic situation of the earthquake in the Marmara Sea, which gave „a remarkable and irreplaceable unity” at the level of the profile industry.
Also as a direct result of the earthquake produced 10 years ago, there have emerged a number of institutions specializing in monitoring and rapid response in case of catastrophic risks actually taking place: floods, earthquakes and landslides. One of the most developed systems is the one coordinating the response of local, specialized authorities in the Istanbul area, city that, in case of an earthquake of 7.5 degrees on the Richter scale, would suffer economic losses exceeding USD 40 billion. AKOM - as the system is called - has all the equipment necessary to intervene promptly in case of need: equipment and intervention installations, staff trained for such situations, cameras placed in all districts of Istanbul, weather stations, separate satellite communications system etc.
We have 5,000 firefighters, compared to only 1,600 in 2003, who should be able to reach any point of the city in maximum 5 minutes, said the representative of AKOM, that, besides all their available material facilities, are specifically concerned with the organization of training sessions with authorities and population, to prepare them to react in case of catastrophies.
PRIMM - Insurance & Pensions Magazine was Media Partner of the event and it was represented at the meeting by Sergiu COSTACHE, President of Media XPRIMM, Adriana PANCIU, CEO, and Alexandru D. CIUNCAN, Business Development Director.
