The impact of lending on bancassurance activity

Due to financial crisis, and especially because of prudence in lending (retail, micro, and corporate), banks are looking for new sources of income, and bancasurance is clearly a potential source of revenue. Thus, in the financial market, the interests of two major components of it are met: banks maximize commission income, and insurers make access to the large customer base of banks. Bancassurance is a distribution channel of insurance products through bank branches, bringing important advantages for banks, insurance companies and customers. The main advantage for the bank is that earns fee amount from the insurance company, the insurance company increases customers data base and market share, the client satisfy his financial needs and requests in the same institution. Considering that in Romania, banks and insurers do not provide information on the number of insurances sold via the bancassurance distribution channel, as well as commissions obtained by banks for the insurance sale, to determine the development of bancassurance in Romania, we used the statistical data provided by the National Bank of Romania, on credit growth and data provided by The Financial Supervision Association, on the evolution of gross written premiums. Bancassurance is one of the most important insurance distribution channels, accounting for approximately 36% of the global insurance market, in 2016, Europe’s insurers generated total premium income of €1 189bn and had €10 112bn invested in the economy. Regarding to the risks of bancassurance business for banks and insurers, they mainly concern distinct capital requirements for the banking and insurance systems, which will be covered by the Basel III and Solvency II directives. This paper aims to analyze the influence of credit on the bancassurance activity in the last 5 years in Romania, the economic, political and legal factors that have a negative impact on the development of bancassurance, and also the calculating the correlation coefficient r (Pearson’s coefficient) and his result.