While European countries have a centuries-long tradition of insurance, in Russia this business is relatively new and is still struggling to attract the masses. The Leader talked to one of this country’s oldest insurers, who, having obtained Western experience, came to Russia with the conviction that a useful service such as insurance can become popular anywhere, including Russia. Marat Ainetdinov of insurance company Progress-Garant speaks about the business of selling insurance in this country.

Marat Ainetdinov’s insurance company, Progress-Garant, emerged from two companies working with the oil giant YUKOS— Yukos-Garant and Progress— and first saw the light of day in 2000. Though it still works with Yukos — insuring 95 percent of the firm’s projects — Progress-Garant has expanded to work with many outside clients.

You came to work in the insurance business by chance. Why did you decide to devote your career to it?
Yes, it all happened quite accidentally. I got acquainted with this business when I was asked to translate for a big insurance company called “Rossiya.” As I got to know it better, I realized that this is a profession that gives you an opportunity to make non-traditional decisions. Here you never get tired of what you are doing. Every day there are new clients, and this variety makes you enjoy your work and lifts your spirits.


How did you profit from your internship in England?
I started working in insurance in 1992, before I went to England. The situation in Russia at the time was difficult as far as both politics and economics go. There were many problems on a day-to-day basis. Wages were low, prices were high, life was hard — and insurance was far from flourishing. People had better things to think about. So I had doubts as to the expediency of my choice.

The most important thing the internship gave me was helping me realize that it is an exciting and respected profession. I saw that insurance companies are financially powerful institutions and understood we were heading in the same direction. It assured me that I had taken the right road.

Was it difficult to apply your UK-obtained knowledge in Russia?
When I returned, I brought two suitcases of documents and books. I had the feeling I had learned everything, and I was very enthusiastic and sure that I would come and change everything for the better. But here things were different. There was a huge distance between the respect that this profession enjoyed in the West and the attitude toward insurers in Russia. The first two-three months were tough for me because what I thought would work didn’t work. So I had to recollect my previous practical experience to begin readjusting. Later, the market became more professional, enabling me to use the skills I had obtained in England.

What made the job offer at Yukos-Garant so appealing?
Before, I was working in the Moscow representative office of a big foreign brokerage company AON, that offered very good salaries. But my job there didn’t give me very much satisfaction. I couldn’t adjust to the rhythm of work in a Western company — it was too slow for me. And I yearned to work at full force. It was like training on a treadmill that just doesn’t go fast enough — you want to go faster, but the machinery can’t comply. That is why establishing an insurance department at Yukos was a challenge I was glad to take on. I was intrigued by the idea of creating something out of nothing. I wanted to be a pioneer.

Why was creating your own business so important for you?
I always wanted to create my own company. I also wanted to develop the insurance business the way I understood it. And you know how it is when you work in somebody else’s company and you are not the decision-maker; all you can do is comply with the decisions made by the ultimate manager. And, throughout my working experience, my vision of problems often contradicted that of the management of the company where I was employed. So, I had a very strong desire to start working on my own and to make my ideas into reality independently.

You headed Yukos-Garant right after the crisis. How did you manage to revive the company?
To tell you the truth, I don’t think I would be able to repeat something like that now. I came to a company that owed salaries to its employees, a company that was about to be thrown out of its office because of a huge rent debt. The situation was quite critical, so for the first couple months as risk manager, I was very busy introducing anti-crisis measures. We managed to reach stability — by the middle of 1999, while we didn’t have any extra money, we at least were managing to pay for ourselves. This cost me my health, and for quite a long while my family saw me only on Sundays. But I don’t regret it. I think you always have to sacrifice something if you want to succeed. Some people out there might say that entrepreneurship is a way to get easy money, but it is not true in the slightest. It is hard work indeed.

The name of your new insurance company, Progress, does not hint at the connection with Yukos. Is this deliberate?
Yukos is an oil brand which has it’s own goodwill. It may have friends and rivals. And I didn’t want to be associated with them. Besides, we were limited to working within the affairs of the holding, and if we wanted to work with other clients we had to create our own brand. We ended up taking on the name “Progress” — a company that belonged to Yukos-Garant. Created in 1989, Progress was the first insurance company in the country. It had a unique history; it had its ups and downs, but never went bankrupt and never cheated its clients. I set a goal for myself — to revive the brand. The switch went quite smoothly, even though our old clients needed some time to get used to our new name. You know, our people are used to feeling safe behind garish names. Now we have many new interesting clients who have nothing to do with Yukos, so I think I can say that we have managed to form our own brand with its own value on the market.

Do you think there is any field on the market where rival insurance companies can cooperate?
We are competing with the top 20 companies, but it doesn’t prohibit us from communicating with each other, from shaking hands, from discussing common problems. There is rivalry, but compared to other businesses I think that insurers have many topics to work on together for mutual profit. The example of what has happened in America shows that we should build closer relationships, for example in the field of re-insurance.

How do Russians perceive this business?
Insurance services make sense for those who earn enough to put money aside. And the problem today is that most people cannot save money because they don’t make enough.

If we take the psychological side of things, we’ll have to turn to our history. In 1917 people were given a good shaking, and since then they got used to stress, because everybody knew that any moment you could be killed or taken to prison. So people didn’t think about tomorrow and were simply concerned with survival. Only in the ’70 and ‘80s, when repressions ended, did people become more calm and sure. Then came another shock in 1991 that changed people’s understanding of life dramatically. Suddenly they started to think about their future, retirement and, after 1998 — about safety and risks. This is not a mass tendency yet. And I think that insurers should work on it. They should unite in order to transform people’s understanding.