The Insurance Academy Event 19.9.2023

Another fantastic event at the Fernfachhochschule Schweiz in Zurich from The Insurance Academy academy hosted by Luca Bertacchi

Francesco Camerlingo from Octium and Veronique Simonin from Swiss Life Global Solutions gave a deep dive on the Cyprus and Greek insurance market. Vassilis Katsikis added when needed.

Cyprus, as the door to Europe for many citizens offers great opportunities for PPLI due to the portability in. other markets if clients decided. To move on later.

While in Greece PPLI is a recognized, tax compliant product which is less known in the market. However, according to the UBS Global Wealth Report 2023, Greece also has 79,000 US Dollar millionaires.

How can the insurer make them aware of the attractive product?

Volkan Morel from Octium introduced the Turkish product at the event. Turkey is currently well known for its high inflation and Lira depreciation. It had in August an inflation rate of 59% while in 2022 it was around 72.31%. Against the USD 1 Turkish Lira went from 0.075 to 0.037 USD. The hope is that the new Governor of the Central Bank of the Republic of Türkiye Hafize Gaye Erkan, a former First Republic Bank Managing Director and Mehmet Simsek, Minister of Treasury & Finance and former Merrill Lynch economist will bring Turkey back on track.

With all these turbulences Turkish citizen might not yet have the mind for an insurance solution. A further negative aspect it the FX gain which they need to pay. If one buys shares for 1000 USD and sell the same share later for 1000 USD, there was no profit in USD.

However, a profit will be calculated based on the exchange rate and as the Turkish Lira devalued such a transaction will be taxed. Let’s just take the above exchange rate from 1.1.2022 and 20.9.2023. A fictive profit of Turkish Lira 13’693.7 will be calculated and taxed (1000/.075=13’333.34 vs 1000/.037 =27027).

The event ended with a roundtable Q&A between the participants before the Lunch-Networking started.

Looking forward to the next event from the Insurance Academy on November 8th. If you have questions till then, please feel free to ask on https://www.theinsuranceacademy.ch