Inspectors from the CPC entered the offices of the Association of Insurers in Bulgaria , NOVA reported.
The reason is suspicions of a cartel between insurance companies due to the price of "Civil Liability" insurance. The inspection began days ago after a national protest by taxi drivers. They were provoked by a drastic increase in the price of "Civil Liability" insurance policies. for the yellow cars.
The inspection lasted several hours. Numerous documents were seized from the office of the Association of Insurers – on paper and digital. Both chat correspondence and e-mails were checked. “Cartels are extremely difficult to prove. Agreements can sometimes be verbal. The goal is to establish at least some evidence through electronic correspondence, which can be chats or e-mails, which would give grounds for the exchange of sensitive commercial information,” said Irina Tagarinska from the CPC.
From the branch of taxi drivers, due to whose protest the investigation for a cartel began, determined the jump in the price of insurance “Civil Liability” as detrimental to both business and themselves. “There is a large exodus of drivers as they cannot cope with the financial burdens they bear. This is an awful lot of money, everything goes up – civil, insurance, fuel“, notes one of the disgruntled drivers. He added that there is only one way to offset the costs – to work more hours.
If the CPC finds evidence of a cartel, the substituted insurance companies will be fined up to 10 percent of the previous year's turnover. “A participant in a cartel who admits his participation and gives sufficient evidence to the Commission to establish the violations, could be exempted from sanctions,“, Tagarinska stressed.
The Association of Bulgarian Insurers (ABZ) provides full assistance to the Commission for the Protection of Competition (CPC) in the investigation undertaken, according to their position to the media. “We are convinced that the results of the inspection will demonstrate the strict compliance with the legal provisions by the Association of Bulgarian Insurers”, they also write from ABZ. “Insurance companies have their own individual policies regarding the formation of insurance premiums for individual lines of business, including the mandatory insurance “Civil Liability” of motorists. Each company determines its market behavior for individual insurances based on its own business strategy, risk appetite, short-term and long-term goals”, the Association emphasizes.