OREANDA-NEWS. April 20, 2010. Ingosstrakh was a strategic partner of the round table “Agricultural Insurance 2010. High Hopes”, held on April 15 at Holiday Inn Lesnaya. The event was organizer by the Insurance Today Media Group with the support of the All-Russian Union of Insurers.

Participants of the round table included A.N. Baturkin, Deputy Executive Director of the -Russian Union of Insurers; V. Balakireva, Deputy Director of the Financial Policy Department of the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation; L. Senkina, Deputy Director of the Federal Supervi-sion Service for Insurance, insurance companies’ representatives, mass media.

Nikolay Galushin, Deputy General Director of Ingosstrakh, made a report. In particular, he remarked that agricultural insurance plays an important role in ensuring the country’s food security. The extent of losses which may result from one adverse factor may significantly exceed even the largest industrial and technological disasters, as the insured event may arise in several constituent entities of the Russian federation at once. Clients’ demand for insurance of agro-industrial risks grows every year. Despite the stagnation of the Russian insurance market and reduction of federal funds allocated for crop insurance, agricultural insurance is one of the few market segments which showed a growth in a year of crisis. N. Galushin stated that now it is impossible to definitely say how many Russian insurers are engaged in agricultural insurance. The only available data are those concerning crop insurance funded by the state, according to publications of the Federal Agency of State Support of Insurance in Agroindustrial Production of the Ministry of Agriculture of the Russian Federation. According to such data, the program is implemented in over 60 constituent entities of the Russian Federation and involves more than 60 Russian insurers. Today, it is not a secret that some of them consider this work as a way to “make money” which does not require full and compe-tent client support and adequate loss settlement. This leads to the agricultural producers’ incom-prehension and mistrust of insurance companies. In N. Galushin’s opinion, to change the situation and ensure further progressive development of agricultural insurance in Russia it is necessary to take measures to standardize anti- fraud schemes, risk assessment approaches, methods of losses settlement and improving insurance product lines to make insurance affordable and sough-for among agricultural producers. To solve these tasks it is necessary to involve the Government (to approve a long-term agricultural insurance development conception in the country and a law on ag-ricultural insurance), the Ministry of Agriculture (the central element of the system), the Federal Antimonopoly Service, a large number of agricultural producers, insurance organizations, and bod-ies whose competences include identifying and countering insurance fraud.