Even in 2021, the situation in the Czech Republic was not easy from the travel insurance point of view. However, ERV Evropská has been able to strengthen its market position and relations with its main trading partners thanks to its specialization.
Already in June 2020, ERV Evropská was the first to launch the comprehensive solution for all Covid-19 travel situations. This step later proved to be crucial and confirmed the company’s position as the market leader in travel insurance, able to provide smart solutions.
The first 4 months of 2021 were marked by a drop of sales due to Covid-19 related travel restrictions. Results were negatively affected by a small number of expensive trips (mainly the upper class travelled), which were purchased, insured and cancelled due to the epidemic (large damage from cancellation).
From June 2021, the whole society gradually returned to normal life, people began to plan their summer holidays. The huge hunger for travel and the increased share of regular holidays in our portfolio helped to improve the situation. As there was almost no first minute holiday shopping, all demand was concentrated in the 2 summer months.
ERV Evropská managed to maintain cooperation with all major tour operators, and we also established an exclusive partnership with the 4th largest travel agency (Čedok). Today, 9 of the 10 largest tour operators cooperate with ERV Evropská.
Although companies travelled less than before the epidemic, they remained faithful to our services. After Allianz stopped offering its travel insurance on the Czech market, we gained an interesting part of its corporate clients. Despite difficult negotiations with reinsurers and our partners, we were able to continue to provide insolvency insurance for the main ones. Overall, we insure about 20% less tour operators than last year.
We have renewed all large corporate clients, including the most important one, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In addition, since we had Covid-19 cover and clients are generally more interested in the quality of travel insurance, we have signed several contracts with a number of new interesting corporate clients.
In November, we launched the modified SingleTrip insurance, which is built on a modular basis and allows for much better individual adaptation to the client's needs. At the same time, we launched a brand new Sales Online application.