Insurers simplify payments for flight delay
Against the backdrop of the forced closure of airports in May holidays, insurers establish a simplified settlement of insured events at risk of flight delay. Their number is calculated by thousands, and the volume of payments is estimated at tens of millions of rubles. Such cases occur infrequently, and the loss of this segment is much lower than the average for the insurance market, which allows insurers to attract shares of accelerated payments of new customers. However, it will be problematic to compensate for their losses due to the force majeure status of the event.
Insurers introduce a simplified settlement of insured events at risk of flight delayed. This was stated in Rosgosstrakh. Such a decision was made in connection with the forced closure of airports in the May holidays, but applies to all cases of delayed flights for force majeure, the company explained. The largest companies, Alfastrakhovanie and Renaissance Insurance offer a similar method of settlement.
According to Nadezhda Rosgosstrakh’s personal insurance department, the director of the Department of Methodology and underwear, the company is ready to resolve the insurance events in a special order – in particular, customers will not be requested by a document confirming the reasons for the delay, canceling or transfer of a flight. “In ordinary circumstances, the insurance rules require the provision of such a certificate to receive a payment,” she explains. “We ourselves check the status of flights, determine the duration of the delay or cancellation of the flight, after which we send a message to the client with an already calculated amount and a reference to payment. No additional certificates are required to receive the payment, ”the alfastrovanie notes. In case of departure of departure for more than three hours, customers are automatically sent to SMS “with a list of documents that need to be provided for compensation,” said Sberbelcom. “In our company as a whole, one document delay is enough to pay,” said Renaissance Insurance.
The collapse in the work of Russian airports began in the evening of May 6 due to the threat of airplane attacks. The restrictions were first introduced in Vnukovo, Zhukovsky and Domodedovo, later to Sheremetyevo, after which the airports of Sochi, Kazan, Kirov and Nizhnekamsk also temporarily closed. According to the Association of Tour operators of Russia, only from 16:00 on May 6 to 8:00 on May 7, about 350 flights were detained, which affected the interests of at least 60 thousand passengers.
According to Rosgosstrakh, this time thousands of customers of the company faced the problem. According to Alfastrakhovaniya, from May 8 to 11, insured events were recorded from 7.5 thousand passenger insured in the company and predicted even 1 thousand applications. The limit at such a risk is usually about 10-15 thousand rubles, said Ivan Rybakov, adviser to the insurance practice of IEGL IEGAL. At the same time, passengers have the opportunity to get insurance if it was paid for the purchase of tickets. Usually a simplified regime is valid for one to two weeks after an insured event, says independent expert Andrei Barhota.
Against this background, the volume of payments may seriously increase, experts say. According to Mr. Barkhota, the volume of agreed payments can reach 50 million rubles, in Alfastrakhovanie it is expected that the total amount of payments only to their customers may exceed 32 million rubles. “This is very significant, since it ever exceeds the indicators by us by several times,” the company noted.
At the same time, it will be difficult for insurers to compensate for these expenses. According to Artem Kopylov, a partner of Pen & Paper’s lawyers, one of the legal instruments may be the exercise of the regression of the air carriers, and in this case, the judicial disputes of insurers with airlines are almost inevitable. “If the basis of delays was the closing of airspace on the initiative of state bodies, this can be considered as force majeure-in such situations, carriers have the right to refer to exemption from responsibility, including to insurers,” he says.
According to experts, insurers simplify settlement to popularize the segment. In April, amendments were adopted to the Law “On Protection of Consumer Rights”, which will limit the airline “in the possibility of proactive proposal to passengers of voluntary insurance services,” Alfastrachuitia noted. Sales of voluntary passenger insurance policies in case of delay or cancellation of departure as a result decreased to historically low levels, they explain there. Thus, simplified regulation is designed to prepare the conditions for the integration of insurance premiums into the cost of air tickets, motivating customers to buy, said Andrei Barhota. According to the expert, the volume of the segment is about 2 billion rubles. per year, and the loss is at a low level due to rare insured events – 20-30%. At the same time, according to the Central Bank, in 2024, on average in the insurance market, the loss of loss exceeded 52%.
