Deniz Emeklilik aims to grow further

The insurance policies sold through post offices constitute only 1 percent of Deniz Emeklilik’s total policy sales. The company has plans to increase that figure to 2.5 percent this year and to 5 percent in three years.

Deniz Emeklilik educated nearly 3,000 Postal and Telecommunications General Directorate, or PTT, employees on the post office insurance business. The company created an electronic version of the service last year. Currently anyone can obtain an insurance policy from a PTT office in just 45 seconds. Some 7,000 insurance policies were sold via post offices last year. Deniz Emeklilik has been selling personal accident and life insurance policies via PTT offices located in more than 3,000 places in Turkey. The company plans to expand by adding unemployment insurance and pension policies among the portfolios handled by the post offices.

International examples
There are very good examples of insurance policy sales implemented by post offices in various countries, including Japan, Hungary and Belgium, said Raif Deniz Yurtseven, managing director of Deniz Emeklilik.

"We have a good relationship with PTT. We aim to use our experience in bancassurance for this project," said Yurtseven.

Bancassurance is the selling of insurance policies by a bank. The word emerged as banks and insurance companies merged and banks sought to provide insurance, especially in markets that have been liberalized recently. "We plan to launch sales of pension policies at PTT offices in the middle of this year," said Yurtseven. "We aim to see a successful performance in the pension area since we have managed to do well in bancassurance."

Acquiring Global Hayat Sigorta, Denizbank Financial Services began operating in the life insurance industry in 2007 under the name of Deniz Emeklilik & Hayat. According to the data of the first three quarters of 2008, Deniz Emeklilik enhanced its premium production by 89 percent.