Uzbekistan reinsurance

Good luck to them, I say. Uzbek carrier, Transinsurance, has recently been granted a licence by the Ministry of Finance to start writing reinsurance business, effectively the first domestic reinsurer in the market.

Transinsurance Director-General Talgat Kasymov mentioned some of the perceived advantages in having a domestic RI carrier:
>Meanwhile, there is one more considerable advantage from the entrance of a reinsurance company into the Uzbek market that should be noted. The fact that local insurance companies reinsure their risks with non-residents results in substantial loss to the budget of the country (since large risks require high premiums and correspondingly high money outflows). Besides, there still remains the problem of loss control. If an insurance case occurs, the insurers will have to claim for compensation payout from the residents of other countries, where different legislation applies. As a result, the process of compensation payout can turn out quite complicated and burdensome. All conflicting issues on the payouts to our companies will have to be handled by the international courts, which may be quite expensive.

And by the same token, I imagine that not a few international carriers would be reluctant to submit to the Uzbek legal system (as others have found to their cost[1]).

I have tried to go to Uzbekistan three times on holiday but been stymied each time – first time, I was booking the tickets online on the morning of 11 September 2001; second time, GB and TB decided to invade Iraq; third time, US presidential elections coincided with Uzbek elections which were, er, “troubled“. I think I’ve given up pro tem, though I should still dearly love to see the Registan and Bokhara.

For more on Uzbekistan, and an overview of its current state, you could do worse than read the transcript of this speech to Chatham House (the Royal Institute for International Affairs) by Craig Murray, former HM Ambassador in Tashkent.

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[1] Not far from the minaret is the 21-foot-deep Black Well where Emir Nasrullah imprisoned two Englishmen, Charles Stoddart, a colonel in the British Army, and Captain Arthur Connolly of the Bengal Light Cavalry. Connolly and Stoddart had been sent by Queen Victoria of England to wean the emir away from an alliance with Tsar Nicholas I of Russia, in an early manifestation of the Great Game politics that has bedevilled the region to this day. Nasrullah’s cruelty knew no bounds. He had assassinated his own father and four brothers to capture the throne. He brooked no slight from anyone, not even from the mighty Queen Victoria or her representative Lord Palmestron whose missives failed to display the exaggerated courtesies expected by the emir. The British emissaries were flung into the well along with specially bred vermin and reptiles, and subsequently beheaded.
Source: HinduOnNet