The FINANCIAL — GPI Holding, the second largest insurance company in Georgia, serves 200,000 people with the majority of 120,000 being from the socially vulnerable part of the population. The company was the first to offer insurance on flight tickets and any kind of unforeseen happenings when planning departure, including risks related to cancelations/delay or other risks.
“We serve 200,000 people with insurance services in Georgia, from this the majority of about 120,000 people are socially vulnerable who have state financed social assistance,” said Tiniko Stambolishvili, head of Public Relations at GPIH.
Since the founding of GPI Holding in Georgia in 2001, the company has participated in various CSR activities including charities, Safe Roads project, additional medical assistance programmes, and valuable treasures being moved from Georgia and vice versa. As Tiniko Stambolishvili told us, the company plans to continue further promotion of CSR in 2011 and initiate and sponsor different cultural, medical and other projects aimed at societal development and care.
“It’s very frequently the case that we over accomplish our responsibility in terms of offering socially vulnerable additional support which is not actually included in the insurance policy. Thereby if a person appeals to GPI Holding for additional support like medicaments then we separately go through the application and 90% of them are accepted,” said Stambolishvili.
“In addition we partner with fund SOCO which is under the first lady Mrs. Sandra Elisabeth Roelofs’ patronage and have done several projects with them in the past 2 years. We’re going to continue cooperating with this fund and bring necessary primary aid to people in the regions as well as financial assistance. This year we also did a project with them dealing with reproductive health,” Stambolishvili revealed.
Road safety is of vital importance for GPI Holding, for this purpose the company is partnering with Safe Roads. As Tiniko Stambolishvili says, GPI Holding is also one of the board members and will continue to partner with the organization in the future as well.
“We may also join the Employee Volunteering project this year. In this particular deal, we have special training centres where we’re training in particular young people on how to become sales agents for an insurance company. So we’ll be very happy to participate in the project and have our own stake there,” noted Stambolishvili.
GPI Holding already serves over 1,000 companies in Georgia, including both Georgian and foreign ones. The company also insures the moving of valuable materials and over all the number of individuals insured at GPI amounts to 200,000 people.
As company reps said to The FINANCIAL, the most popular insurance in Georgia is health insurance followed by car insurance and general liability, pension insurance.
“In 2011 we’ll be working on CSR with regards to healthy lifestyle, safety, arts, and our Georgian cultural treasures. We are actually the only insurance company which for 4 years already has had branches in all the regions of Georgia” she said.
“We aim to offer our clients optimum price and best conditions-based products. We not only aim at serving the low income population but middle income and higher ones as well,” she added.
“The lowest cost of insurance with us is 5 GEL per month, for health insurance. We also offer the best conditions to our corporate clients compared to other companies which mean that even if there are only 10-15 people working at a company we offer them insurance with the best conditions,” noted Stambolishvili.
GPI Holding also partners with the national museum of Georgia and frequently insures the transportation of different artistic works.
Recently GPIH insured Placido Domingo’s concert with its medical personnel of GPIH’s sister clinic CURATIO sent to Batumi. “The amount of this contract was 3 Million USD, with the insurance type being general responsibility” Stambolishvili told us.
“GPI Holding was also the first to insure the world tour of Georgian treasure, which included storing famous works in depots and their transportation to different locations. There were also some other companies involved in the insurance of the treasures outside the country. The contract was of tens of millions of USD,” said Stambolishvili.
As company representatives claim the major challenge for insurance companies in Georgia is still a lack of information about insurance policies which is why GPI Holding plans to initiate a special programme aimed at raising awareness among the population.
“It is a well known fact that insurance policies aren’t widely popular in Georgia yet and the younger population don’t insure as well as some of the elderly. The main reason for this is the lack of dissemination of information. Most people don’t actually know the real benefit insurance might give them.
As opposed to the situation in Georgia, in European countries the average family budget for insurance accounts for a minimum of 10-15%.
Although there are huge challenges in Georgia with regards to insurance companies en masse, year to year the insurance market is showing steady growth,” claims Tiniko Stambolishvili.
Overall the premiums at GPI Holding last year amassed 65 million GEL and the market share of the company is 17% in Georgia. The company is the second largest insurance company after Aldagi BCI.
The largest project that GPI Holding got involved in last year was hospital development with the company shareholders approving 25 million GEL investments which included building of 10 multifunctional hospitals within Georgia’s regions. Construction works have already started and it will serve its first patient before the end of 2011.
As GPI Holding representatives say, their products are most popular with adults, starting from 25 years.
“General liability is also popular in Georgia, especially for car owners and organizations that have greater liabilities. In addition the number of pension fund members amounts to 10,000. This type of insurance is very interesting first of all due to the fact that a person will know beforehand what amount of pension he/she will have when he retires. We always give a higher interest than the average deposit rates at Georgian banks. We also give the person an opportunity to take out the money before he/she retires.
At GPI Holding there is a very popular consultants’ service, where our employees go to people’s homes and explain all the necessary info about our policies and products, all this for free.
We also give people the opportunity to fill out an insurance application form online, which has proved quite popular,” said Stambolishvili.
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