1. The most important criterion for choosing is the reliability of the insurance company, to which you trust your money. Therefore, when choosing the company, you need to evaluate this very reliability. Of course, it is not so easy for a non-professional to analyze the insurer’s reliability. Still, there are basic attributes allowing to do it independently:
Firstly, this is the insurance company’s financial state. You can find information about it by visiting www.nationalbank.kz - the website of the RK National Bank; main financial indicators of all Kazakhstani insurance companies are presented in the "statistics" section. Pay attention to the volume of assets and equity. It is very important to know if the main financial indicators of the insurance company grow, at least gradually. It means that the company’s financial state is good, it is reliable, and its customer base is growing.
The second important mark of reliability is the ratio of premiums collected and payments made. On the same website, you can see these two parameters – the premiums collected by the company and payments made to customers on insured events. If the collected premiums amount to more than one billion tenge and the payments to customers are no more than 10% of the premium amount, it often means that the company does not seek to comply with its obligations. Of course, the company can have few insured events during a certain period, but this happens seldom.
2. Be sure to check the license. Make sure that the company you are choosing has a license to carry out the insurance activities in the Republic of Kazakhstan. A copy of the authorization document can be requested for seeing from the company itself, but it is also useful to look into the Register of Licenses available on the RK National Bank website www.nationalbank.kz.
3. An important feature is the duration of the company’s presence in the insurance service market, so ask to provide you with the company’s history. The longer the company exists in the market, the better it characterizes its stability and development. If the company is old, it has more experience in the insurance business. It is good if the company has an extensive branch network and a large list of insurance services. A big and diverse insurance portfolio means safer and more reliable insurance services by this company since all risks cannot manifest themselves simultaneously in different areas. If the amount of payments significantly exceeds the premium collection, company’s fast dismissal is probable.
4. The insurance company’s risks must be reinsured. The company’s reliability is also due to its optimally chosen reinsurance policy. It is better when the risks accepted for insurance are reinsured in the largest foreign companies with high ratings of financial stability and impeccable reputation.
5. Study the insurance rules carefully. Of course, this is tedious, but extremely useful. Pay special attention to the section of the rules listing the signs of the insured event and exceptions.
6. Visit the insurance company’s website. Find out whether the news are frequently updated on the site, whether there are descriptions of the insurance programs offered by the company, their extent, customers’ feedback and published financial results of the company.
7. New service technologies introduced by the company are also important, including the quality of the provided services, convenient payment forms, promptness of insurance payment making, etc. Even when communicating on the phone, you can understand the attitude of the company’s personnel to the potential customers.
These are seven main factors that will help you to choose a worthy insurance company, which will not let you down and fulfill all of its obligations to you in the event of an unforeseen situation, because you trust not only your money to the life insurance company, but also a much more valuable thing - your life.
