GDV CONFIDENT ABOUT GERMAN LIFE MARKET

German insurers’ federation GDV has forecast no further problems in the country’s life assurance market, following the collapse last year of Mannheimer Leben, the life unit of SDAX-listed Mannheimer Versicherung. Speaking to Die Welt newspaper, GDV president Bernhard Schareck noted that “all but Mannheimer have survived these times well” and said that there were no signs for further problems. It was in June that Mannheimer Leben became the first life assurer in the country to be put into insolvency in more than 50 years, after the country’s financial regulator BaFin decided that all possible rescue attempts had failed. Mannheimer’s policyholders are in line to become the first to receive returns from Protektor, an insurance industry-sponsored local safety net that was established last year but has since lain dormant. Although insurers are meant to hand over up to 1% of their assets to the scheme, equal to about 5bn euro, only about 3.2m euro has to date been handed over, by 10 local players. In the lead-up to Mannheimer’s closure, GDV had tried to organise a 370m euro bail-out, with insurers paying according to their share of German insurers’ total investment portfolio, but failed to obtain the necessary approval of 90% of members.