Soviet Union has a State Foreign Insurance system which operates in the international market. system consists of an insurance company in Moscow and several wholly owned subsidiaries in western Europe. It has ties with the other East European state insurers. Information is not readily available on this Soviet business but the following article gives a general outline of the system, which will be of interest to American exporters and marine insurers in the light of expanding possibilities of eastwest trade. On December 6, 1965 Journal of Commerce carried an article entitled State Insurance Organization Is Becoming Active in World Markets. This article caused some stir in the insurance industry. It stated that the Soviet insuring organization had a share in covering American risks placed in the foreign market. This resulted from the fact that foreign insurers, on occasion, reinsure portions of their business with the Russians and, in return, these companies accept retrocessions and reinsurance of Russian risks which may then be passed along to American insurers. American companies usually do not know that in some reinsurance portfolios they have such business. These risks are mostly marine risks. writer concluded that involvement with American insurance risks is almost unavoidable. There seems to be no doubt that our Paul J. Best, Ph.D., is Instructor in the Department of Student Services at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. Dr. Best's dissertation at New York University was titled The Origins and Development of Insurance in Imperial and Soviet Russia. Before going to Brooklyn College, Dr. Best worked in the Bureau of Research and Statistics of the New York State Insurance Department. This article was submitted in November, 1965. trade with the Soviet Union will slowly expand, especially in view of recent remarks the President made expressing the wish for a further breakdown of the barriers between the United States and the U.S.S.R. There is no doubt that insurance will play a major role in facilitating this international trade. Since it is virtually certain that American insurance people will be coming into closer contact with their Soviet counterparts in the near future, it may be worthwhile to look into the international insurance system of the U.S.S.R. Soviet Insurance Systems Soviet Union operates two insurance systems. first, the internal domestic operation, Gosstrakh, has been reported upon previously in this Journal and will not be discussed in detail here.' other insurance system-Inostrannoe Gosudarstvennoe Strakhovanie (Foreign State Insurance), or as it is commonly abbreviated, Ingosstrakh-is the international insurer of the U.S.S.R. Today, Ingosstrakh has a state monopoly on all '-Paul P. Rogers, The Structure of Soviet Journal of Risk and Insurance, vol xxxii, No. 2 (June, 1965), p. 237-254.
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Jan 1, 1972
Stephen J Vasek 
Open Access
