2merkato

Ethiopian Insurance Corporation is re-invite  architects for the design its new headquarters building. The building will be located in front of the Ambassador Theater.

The project was planned six years ago and the contract was awarded to Varnero, but was subsequently rejected by the board of the Ethiopian Insurance Corporation. The re-invitation for architects is due to the intention of the company to increase the height of the building and improve the standards, sources told The Reporter reported.

Awash Insurance has announced 18 million birr in revenue in the first quarter of the current fiscal year. The Ethiopian insurers paid out 69 million birr in claims which is 19 million birr more than the same period last year.

Awash Insurance was able to sale 203 million birr worth of insurance policies over the last year exhibiting a 46% increase from the previous year according to Kenea Daba, head of the Awash board.

The Ethiopian Insurance Fund Office aims to increase its third party insurance collections to 30.8 million birr in the new financial year as well as taking over some of the tasks that it had outsourced to the Ethiopian Insurance Corporation.

The IFO also expects to increase access by building five branch offices in regional towns during the current fiscal year explained Bayleyegn Bekele, Public Relations Head at the fund.

The board’s plans were approved by its board earlier this month 600 thousand certificates and stickers have already been ordered from Kenya for the current year said Bayleyegn. The stickers and certificates will be distributed to insurance companies.

The Ethiopian insurance industry is anticipating compulsory third-party insurance proclamation with uncertainty. The attitude of the insurers is primarily because motor vehicle insurance has persistently been unprofitable over the years.

Motor vehicle insurance is unprofitable due to high rates of traffic accidents and consistently increasing vehicle prices and maintenance costs according to industry sources. The motor insurance sector has the highest premiums because of the heavy losses associated with it, explain insiders.

The Ethiopian Insurance Corporation, a state owned company, said that it made a 148.6 million birr profit before tax for the fiscal year to 7 July 2011. It was 15 percent higher than the profit made the previous fiscal year.

The overall asset of the corporation also rose to some 1.5 billion birr by the end of the same period, Wondwossen Iteffa, CEO of the corporation, said. 

Revenue from premium stood at 1.1 billion birr in the period, up by 27.4 percent from last years' income. On the other hand, income from other investments such as dividend on investments elsewhere, rental income from buildings the corporation owns and others yielded 67.6 million birr.