From March 1, the OSAGO reform starts not for everyone. Only policyholders who bought policies after February 28, 2009, can seek compensation from their own insurer. Minor accidents without traffic police still require going to the at fault insurer.

Not all car owners will be able to take advantage, starting March 1, of the much-publicized innovations in the compulsory motor third-party liability insurance system (OSAGO). As follows from the "Agreement between members of the Russian Union of Auto Insurers," only those who insure themselves after February 28, 2009, will be able to seek compensation from the insurer from whom the OSAGO policy was purchased. And filing an accident report without the traffic police will be considered grounds for refusing payment under direct settlement.
As follows from the package of documents launching the OSAGO reform on March 1, the "Agreement between members of the Russian Union of Auto Insurers on direct settlement of losses," the direct settlement procedure (seeking payment from "one's own" insurer, from whom the OSAGO policy was bought) will be available only to those who purchased an OSAGO policy from March 1, 2009. And if a car owner wants to use the OSAGO law provision that allows, in minor accidents (with damage not exceeding 25,000 rubles), not to call a traffic police officer, they will also not be able to receive payment through direct compensation - in this case, as before, they will have to seek the money from the insurer of the at-fault driver. In addition, to receive payment through direct settlement, there must be no casualties in the accident, and there must be no more than two participants in the crash. "Direct compensation" will also not apply to accidents with shared fault by the drivers and so-called contactless accidents (when a vehicle is damaged as a result of an incorrect maneuver by another road user).
Insurers themselves, in order to participate in the direct settlement procedure, must arrange guarantee deposits of 3 million rubles and ensure balances in other special accounts of another 300,000 rubles at the start of each day for mutual settlements. After the insurer pays the loss to "its" OSAGO client, it will bill the company with which the at-fault driver is insured.
As explained by the Russian Union of Auto Insurers (RSA), in general the agreement launching the reform will no longer change. The amendment may affect only the provision allowing holders of new policies to access direct compensation. "We have requested the opinions of lawyers from one of the expert institutes in the field of law, and we are awaiting their response," the RSA said.
This package of documents has already been agreed with the insurance regulator. As the head of the Federal Insurance Supervision Service, Ilya Lomakin-Rumyantsev, said yesterday, "unfortunately, the legislator did not clearly and fully specify the details of the changes, and many lawyers tend to believe that the provision allowing holders of new policies to access direct settlement is ambiguous."
Insurers themselves call the structure "strange," in which the policyholder in one case must go to the insurer of the at-fault driver, and in another - to their own company. "This is some kind of unstable half-measure," says Dmitry Markarov, deputy head of Rosgosstrakh. "The state proposed the compulsory introduction of direct settlement," he reminds, "but at the same time did not take care of cleaning up the market in advance of dubious companies."
Companies fear a large number of non-recoverable payments, so they are trying to minimize the number of clients coming for money. "I always criticize insurers," says Vyacheslav Lysakov, leader of the motorists' movement Freedom of Choice. "But here it is the government that was not prepared for the OSAGO reform." According to him, it was the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Transport, and other agencies that were supposed to issue the package of documents that was ultimately put together by the RSA. "It is clear why insurers are trying to back away from the topic of direct settlement, to minimize payouts," he says. "Allowing only new policies into the reform is a clever invention by insurance lawyers; I do not approve of it. But I understand: companies could choke on the flood of claims for payments."

The deputy head of the Finance Ministry's Department of Financial Policy, Vera Balakireva, believes that establishing the rules of the agreement is the business of the market participants themselves. "As soon as they send us the text of the agreement, we will approve it." Outside observers are not yet prepared to calculate what the redistribution of OSAGO client flows will lead to. "It can be said that the truncated version of the OSAGO reform does not discredit it," says Pavel Samiev, deputy head of the Expert RA rating agency. "But it is clear that these half-measures will someday have to be turned into the fully fledged innovations originally envisioned."