Editorial
Amongst other things, this issue provides a recap of the positive effects and benefits of the investigations and tests that insurers carry out on motor vehicles as the subject of insurance. It is not just a matter of assessing the real expectations of repair costs and thereby establishing a technical basis for setting the premiums for the relevant covers. The experiments carried out in vehicle research centres make sound contributions to road safety and to what has become known as tertiary safety, defined as the location and rescue of victims of road accidents. In an excellent article, Ignacio Juárez, the Managing Director of CESVIMAP (MAPFRE’s Centre for Experimentation and Road Safety) in Ávila, brings the most advanced and up-to-date international perspective in this field.
The Turkish insurance market is in an interesting phase, with tried-and-tested insurance protection schemes being incorporated into the management of both traditional risks and its big earning assets. After almost four years of operation, the Pool for the integrated agricultural risk management -TARSIMis demonstrating that the previous experience of farming insurance in Turkey will be overcome and the question marks it raised resolved. Its General Manager, Bulent Bora, explains how the use of new technologies and a sound technical basis are favouring sustained growth of both the area insured and the covers available.
Credit insurance tends to be a good “thermometer” of the world’s economic and financial health. At the end of 2008, the Spanish market for this class of business detected restrictions in reinsurance capacity and, as in other European countries, looked for a temporary solution in the public sector. In the course of the interview published in this Issue, Ignacio Machetti, General Manager of the Consorcio de Compensación de Seguros, speaks about the actions that ensured the continuity of credit insurance in Spain in difficult times. He also opens up a hopeful horizon in this environment of crisis by pointing out that the intervention of the body that he manages is gradually becoming less necessary where reinsurance of the credit class of business is concerned.
To look at the East is to look at the dawn. This is the view that emerges from the information and opinions of Enrique Clemente III, President and CEO of MAPFRE Insular in the Philippines. Conscious of the insurance market’s exposure to financial crises following the situation created in 1997, which has now been overcome, the various Asian markets are responding and adapting to the new global economic order. The situation is especially interesting in the Philippines, as this is a country with high exposure to natural hazards. When such risks occur, careful coordination from the insurance, scientific and assistance points of view is required, as became apparent following tropical storm Ketsana, which passed across the archipelago in September 2009.