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Stating that insurance has gained more importance after the earthquakes centered in Kahramanmaraş, Ray Sigorta CEO Koray Erdoğan said: “Insurance, which plays an important role against the reality of earthquakes that are uncertain when and where it will occur, ensures that the wounds are quickly healed, and life returns to normal.”
The earthquakes that affected 11 provinces based in Kahramanmaraş caused damage or collapse of many buildings. After this disaster, described as the century’s disaster, the importance of insurance came to the agenda again. It is vital to be aware of the earthquake risk in the territory of our country where active fault lines pass and to have insurance to secure ourselves, our loved ones, and our assets. Stating that “Insurance, which plays an important role against the fact that it is unclear when and where an earthquake will occur, quickly covers wounds and allows life to return to normal again.” Ray Sigorta CEO Koray Erdoğan said: “Earthquake insurance (CEI), which was made mandatory after the earthquake disaster we experienced in 1999, covers the material damages caused to the building as a result of fire, explosion, tsunami, and landslide caused by earthquakes and earthquakes within the limits of the policy. With the regulation made in November of last year, the maximum collateral amount to be paid by DASK for a house was doubled and increased to 640 thousand liras. However, considering the increasing housing prices, the amount of compensation cannot both cover the total loss of the insured building and, due to the content of the policy, the damages to be incurred by the goods in the insured house and expenses such as loss of rent, moral compensation, hospital, and accommodation are not covered. At this point, the housing insurance made optional by homeowners is activated, and the part exceeding the limit is covered. While CEI pays for building damages that may occur due to earthquakes within certain limits, in housing insurance, fire, earthquake, theft, flood, flood, items that have the risk of being damaged by the person added to the policy, and many risks are paid with the limit determined over the square meters and units specified by the insured.”
‘They complement each other’
Emphasizing that housing insurance and compulsory earthquake insurance are independent of each other but complementary to each other, Koray Erdoğan said: “In fact, this relationship between the two insurances is very similar to the logic between traffic insurance and IMM insurance. That's why we should show the same attention we show to our vehicles, as well as to our homes and even to ourselves. Citizens should consider taking out compulsory insurance regularly and housing insurance for the parts that remain above the CEI coverage limits and for damages that may occur to their belongings as one of the measures that can be taken against an earthquake disaster. This applies only to damage to housing and property. Very significant damage was caused during the earthquake, especially to vehicles. It is also of great importance to have car insurance for vehicles. Unfortunately, when we look at the sector data, we see that the insurance rate in our country is still meager. Even for mandatory CEI, this rate is 58%, while on the motor insurance side, it falls to 27.6%. However, the earthquake that overwhelmed the whole of Turkey revealed very heavy and painful facts; thousands of buildings completely collapsed or became unusable, tens of thousands of vehicles were damaged, and we lost close to 50 thousand citizens. Now we need to understand that insurance is vital, and we must increase insurance penetration against catastrophic risks such as this earthquake that may occur.”
‘Awareness should be made about the risks’
Koray Erdoğan stated that the number of auto insurance, fire, life, and personal accident insurance policies that include earthquake coverage in the disaster area is around 4 million and that they make great efforts to make the lives of the insured people easier and draw attention to the fact that more than half of the households in the provinces affected by the earthquake lived in buildings built in 2001 and after, according to the data of the Building and Housing Qualifications Survey of the Turkish Statistical Institute (TUIK). Ray Sigorta, the CEO, said: “When we look at the DASK insurance rates in 11 provinces with 2 million 310 thousand housing units, 1 million 119 thousand housing units in the region are uninsured. The housing insurance rate is only 21%, so 485 thousand of houses have insurance. In summary, more than half of the houses do not have any insurance protection, and these figures show a large coverage gap. In the research of the real estate valuation platform Endeksa, which examines the housing and rental prices in and around the provinces affected by the earthquake, it is seen that the projected price increase for February was 8%. The rent increase was 4% in the provinces affected by the disaster before the earthquake, and after the earthquake, the prices of houses for sale in these provinces increased by an average of 14% and rents by an average of 17%. The research results are quite sad but also remarkable because they remind us that losses must be secured in an environment where the value of assets increases and the cost of replacement increases a lot.” |
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