Teodor Marinov, Chief Financial Officer of UBB, Kosta Cholakov, Chief Executive Officer of DZI and Nikolay Stoykov, Chief Executive Officer of UBB Pension Insurance presented their expert opinions on topics, linked to the readiness of businesses and individuals for adopting the euro, the economic prospects before Bulgaria in short-term and long term perspective, the evolvement of the insurance business and of the additional pension insurance, the financial literacy and culture as a factor for the more successful management of personal finance and the prevention of risks and frauds.

„We do not expect increase in interest rates as a result of adopting the euro currency. As regards sectors with poorer performance and structural problems, banks would be inclined to contain the credit growth in those, rather than increase interest rates“, shared Teodor Marinov, Chief Financial Officer at UBB. Regarding income of households, he stated that his expectations were for a slowdown in income growth rates observed over recent years. His advice to individuals was to be more prudent and careful both about consumption, and with the investments they make, given the environment of high valuations of all asset types. Upon making investment decisions every person should assess the potential for downward revaluation of assets. In reply to a question about the role of banks in a changing environment for making business, the Chief Financial Officer of UBB said: „Similar to other financial businesses, banks are making substantial efforts to build effective ecosystems with partners and presence close to points of sale. Today this process is largely supported by technologies and the opportunities through them are to explore customers’ behaviour and to achieve much higher level of personalization of propositions. It is skills and success in managing this process that will determine who will gain competitive advantage on the market.“.

The topic of digitalization and artificial intelligence was also explored by Kosta Cholakov, Chief Executive Officer of DZI. He provided particular examples as to how the penetration of artificial intelligence supported the claim assessment process in motor insurance. „What digitalization exerts as an impact on the insurance sector is to simplify processes and create products that can be used by customers for their faster and efficient service. Artificial intelligence helps us cope better and by creating a faster process with its help, this results in better service and more trust on the part of our customers“, he shared. To a question as to what was needed for increasing the number of insurance policies in the property insurance domain and whether it was necessary to create more mandatory insurance types, he emphasized once again on trust as a factor and gave the example that even though by expanding the scope of mandatory insurance types it was quite possible that penetration would not increase substantially, unless there was trust, having in mind the example of our neighbouring countries with a larger number of mandatory insurances. „Regarding property insurance a model of public-private partnership should be created, which to result in a much more substantial coverage in the property insurance domain, however this should only happen after a quite serious public and expert debate.“, added Kosta Cholakov, the Chief Executive Officer of DZI and stated that investment insurance was a good alternative for obtaining a better yield, given the environment of low interest rates in Bulgaria, while the health insurance provided large opportunities to employers in the social policy domain, aimed at their employees, thus enhancing their trust and loyalty.

As a whole the pension insurance sector is ready for euro adoption - that was the main conclusion in the statement of Nikolay Stoykov, Chief Executive Officer of UBB Pension Insurance. This sector has been preparing itself for the euro adoption for more than two years and presently the operational readiness of the sector for the transition is linked to much more intensity of the efforts, as well as to a change of focus. „During the previous months the bigger part of the preparation was linked to making systems and processes compliant to working with the new currency. Presently the main focus is on testing the entire currency conversion process from A to Z and exploring the sequence of individual steps, the dependencies between those and, generally, on observing the process resilience and how much time it would take.“, he shared. Apart from the operational readiness of the pension insurance sector, the Chief Executive Officer of UBB Pension Insurance determined as very significant the communication part, which intensity had been growing over the recent weeks. That also included personalized communication, targeting customers, with priority being set on those using voluntary pension funds and funds for payment of pensions, who were being provided with useful information and advice, linked to the adoption of the new currency. To a question as to whether there was a connection between the level of financial literacy and the voluntary pension insurance, he said: „There is relatedness between the level of financial literacy and savings in a voluntary pension fund. We observe in our practice that customers of voluntary pension funds are much more active users in terms of scope and frequency of use of the entire spectrum of additional services, provided by us – including also through our digital channels, and that they are much more inclined to provide feedback on the level of servicing.“. 

The Eurozone- Equations and Solutions conference was held on 25-th November in Hilton Hotel, Sofia, with event organizer being Bulgaria ON AIR and Bloomberg TV Bulgaria. UBB, DZI and UBB Pension Insurance were among the partners in making it happen.