Financial Services, Insurance, Latvia

Tara Kneafsey.

Balta is owned by Danish insurance company Codan, which is part of RSA Group.

As Kneafsey told LETA that the management change takes place in a difficult period of time because due to the economic downslide, Balta will have to carry out various optimization processes, which will improve the quality of services and will make a number of company's activities more efficient.

Kneafsey commented that the insurance market in Latvia reduced one to 2% in August, however, Balta plans to conclude this year with good profit results, although does not expect them to be as high as during the years of economy growth.

She underlined that no insurers will be able to earn as high profit as earlier.

Balta does not currently plan to make any employees redundant but will not recruit any new staff either.

Kneafsey predicts that the crisis years will cause a situation where increasingly more customers will demand the insurers to cover their losses and along with that also the number of fraudulent demands will increase.

Over the past five years, Kneafsey has held various positions at RSA, heading the management of large scale projects in Ireland and the United Kingdom.

RSA is one of world's leading insurance groups, which provides insurance services in more than 130 countries across the globe, including the United Kingdom, Scandinavian countries, Canada, Ireland, Asia, Middle East and Latin America.