Speaking to the Anatolia news agency, Karl Fink, VIG, extended executive board member and Ray Insurance chairman, said confident of its expertise in the emerging markets, VIG adopted a completely different market strategy from other international groups, and their market strategy was based on acquiring a small firm to enter the market and then build up through gradual growth.

“While the others prefer buying the biggest firm in market share when they enter a local market, they are risking big financial losses. However, we have never lost money but recently we left the Russian market where we experienced some issues.”

Currently the toughest markets for the VIG Group were Turkey and Ukraine, he said.

“Turkey is a good market for us although the market is still very small and we have few distribution channels. There are only two channels presently. The first channel is the banks, a channel that we don’t have, and the second is small agencies, which have a lot of small firms under their roof. These agencies tend to sell the cheapest policy and do not have a service-oriented sales approach. This endangers the overall market.”  

As part of the company’s gradual growth plans in Turkey, it was keen to collaborate with other groups, he added. “This is what we might do if we cannot build up the growth we desire. But leaving the Turkish market is not an option for us.”