Türkiye: Spike in quake insurance sales lasts for 3 months after Feb 2023 disaster
Insurance sales jumped immediately after the devastating February 2023 7.8 magnitude earthquake, but this spike lasted for around three months only, according to Insurance Association of Türkiye (TSB) member of the board Yavuz Olken.
“Such sales generally last for a month for smaller-scale disasters,” he said.
Mr Olken said this when he and other TSB officials visited the earthquake region on the first anniversary of the disaster, reported Insurance Gazette.
He said, “We will continue to explain how important it is to be insured, but it is vital to approach the issue in a more integrated manner.”
He pointed out that the fact that even the Turkish Catastrophe Insurance Pool had a coverage rate of 60% showed that the insurance industry had a long way to go to get more people to buy insurance.
TSB non-life management committee member Mehmet Tugtan said that inadequate insurance coverage had caused serious problems in the wake of the February 2023 earthquake.
He said that insurers, while handling quake claims, faced problems with businesses that had insured assets for amounts lower than market value in order to pay lower premium amounts.
He said that there was a need to move forward with “the right insurance amount at the right prices” to avoid experiencing the same issue in a possible Marmara Earthquake. The 1999 Marmara earthquake was a 7.6 magnitude earthquake which killed around 18,000 people. The Marmara region sits on a major fault line and expectations are that another massive earthquake is imminent.
