OREANDA-NEWS. February 21, 2014. Deputy Head of FAS, Andrey Kashevarov, discussed this and otehr issues in a report on the “Pressing Aspects of Antimonopoly Regulation of the Insurance Market” at the 4th Annual Conference -‘Russian Insurance Forum” organized by Adam Smith Institute.

Andrey Kashevarov stated that to evaluate the state of competition on the market of insurance services the antimonopoly body is investigating cooperation between insurance and credit organizations in insuring borrowers, particularly, related to a number of insurers, with whom a credit organization cooperates, as well as the size of agent (commission) remuneration, paid by these insurance companies to credit organizations.

Giving statistical data on the number of violations of the antimonopoly law by insurance companies in the past three years, Andrey Kashevarov emphasized a positive trend towards annual decrease of the number of violations. He drew attention of the Forum attendees that lately physical persons complained about imposing additional types of insurance in granting loans, and staring from 2013 – in issuing policies of mandatory motor-vehicle liability insurance. Deputy Head of FAS pointed out at a possible statutory way of resolving the problem: establishing the so-called “cooling period”, during which insurers can refuse an insurance contract without any financial losses.

The report paid considerable attention to the provisions of No. 353-FZ Federal Law “On Consumer Credit (Loan)” of 21.12.2013 coming into force on 1st July 2014, that are aimed, in particular, at protecting the borrowers’ rights for complete and accurate information about consumer qualities and characteristics of the relevant loan products, that insurance and credit organizations must take into account cooperating in the course of insuring bank borrowers.

Andrey Kashevarov specially discussed the draft Federal Law “On Self-Regulated Organizations in Financial Markets”, which is under development. In the FAS view, the provisions of the draft Law can create additional barriers for financial organizations and adversely affect the state of competition. In particular, he pointed out that “FAS has conceptual comments on determining the maximum number of self-regulated organizations of the same type of activities, as well as drafting the common fundamental standards of self-regulated organizations mandatory for all self-regulated organizations of a particular type”.