Assets of Ukrainian insurance companies as of early 2015 exceeded UAH 70 billion, and they slid to UAH 60 billion in 2015. They could decrease by UAH 10-15 billion more by the end of this year, a member of the national commission for financial service markets regulation, Oleksandr Zaletov, has said.

"We anticipate that the [downward] trend will continue in the segment of balance assets of insurance companies. We won't speak about our plans, but we expect that by the end of this year assets of insurance companies will shrink by UAH 10-15 billion more," he said at the presentation of the mandatory criteria and adequacy requirements, diversification and quality of insurance assets in Kyiv on Wednesday.

He said that the insurance market is "losing its weight" due to the part of assets of insurers swelled by the companies. They did not display the real cost of capital.

Director of the insurance oversight department at the commission Yulia Khrystoliubska said that adequate assets, in line with the presented criteria, were only UAH 27 billion out of UAH 60 billion as of early 2016. She said that the market falls short of UAH 2.4 billion of adequate assets to meet the new requirements. If the requirements took effect on December 31, 2015, 52 insurance companies would have failed to meet asset adequacy requirements. Some 146 companies would have failed to meet asset diversification requirements.

Zaletov said that the market could see the improvement in the quality of insurance assets at the end of 2017.

The bottom share of insurance reserves placed in assets with low risk for life insurance from June 30, 2016 is to be at least 25% of insurance reserves and for the rest of the companies – at least 15%. Assets with low risk are government domestic loan bonds; funds in banks with rating of 'AA' or better under the national scale; bonds issued by these banks and bonds of international financial institutions (ISIs). The requirement will be in effect until March 31, 2017.