OREANDA-NEWS. On 20 March 2009 was announced, that the number of tourists insured by Ingosstrakh in 2008 exceeded 3.2 mln. people. The preliminary data for the period show that premiums collected in the tourists’ insurance segment reached RUR 632 mln., which by 35% exceeds the same figure in 2007 with Ingosstrakh’s regional branch network accounting for over 19% of insurance premiums. Experts consider Ingosstrakh to be the leader in the travel insurance market accounting for about 40% of total collected premiums.

Ingosstrakh paid about RUR230 mln. in compensation under travel insurance contracts for 12 months of 2008. Over 21 thousand insurance events were settled with 87 of them being losses compensated with more than USD10,000 each. The largest ones include treatment for stroke organized in Spain totaling Euro30,000 and treatment and casualty evacuation of a lady injured during mountain skiing in Andorra to her home country amounting to over Euro 29,000.

Last year the company concluded contracts with over 70 travel agencies and corporate clients ordering insurance for their employees traveling on business abroad. Today about 350 travel agencies are Ingosstrakh’s partners in travel insurance, including Nataly-Tours, Lanta-Tour, Voyage, Mostravel, Biblio-Globus, Roza Vetrov, Capital-Tour, etc. A major event in 2008 was the launch of retail sale of Ingosstrakh’s new insurance products “Platinum”, “Platinum-Winter”, “Optimal” and “Individual”.

Dmitry Sharlikov, head of the Travel Insurance Department at Ingosstrakh, IJSC, says that the primary task today is to preserve business and make travel insurance available both from the point of view of its cost and the terms of coverage. Despite the crisis phenomena visible in the market the main efforts of the company’s specialists are directed at improving the quality of client support and fast incident settlement. These are the reasons for optimizing the relations with service companies and updating contracts with medical clinics at destinations popular among Russian tourists.