The quality of our 2O18 results mirrored previous trends and the strength of our business. Our performance was all the more remarkable given the more intense competition, persistently wafer-thin interest rates and frenetic pace of digitalisation.
At the same time, we continue to invest in SMEs, mid-sized companies and startups (€5OO million in 2O18) because we regard it as our duty as an institutional investor to support businesses. We have become one of the top 5O global private equity investors with €4.5 billion in investments in the sector.
What strengths can CNP Assurances rely on to help it deal with this ongoing transformation and fierce competition? Our business expertise combined with our ability to offer the new forms of agile insurance put CNP Assurances at the forefront of the sector. Our multi-partnership model and international dimension help to maintain a balanced range of products and keep our results on an even keel. The power of the CNP Assurances name, with its rich 16O-year history and values perfectly attuned to contemporary concerns, is a precious asset. And most crucially, CNP Assurances’ collaborative mindset means the best is yet to come.
By building on its distribution agreement with a leading European bank, CNP Vita is demonstrating the power of the Group’s partnership-based approach in Europe. UniCredit brings to the table its customer knowledge and its 1,365 contact points across Italy, including Sardinia and Sicily. CNP Assurances contributes its ground-breaking expertise in savings and personal risk solutions. When the partnership – first established in 2OO5 – was extended in 2O18, the objectives for the next seven years were raised significantly. The partners have their sights firmly trained on the fledgling personal risk insurance market in Italy, including the SMEs that generate 95% of the country’s economic activity. In its first year in operation, the establishment of a dedicated sales and marketing unit and the extensive range of savings and personal risk solutions put the partnership on track for success.
A nn ua l re p o rt management firms, non-exclusive partnerships
UNLEASHING INITIATIVE-TAKING, THE GOAL OF THE OPEN INNOVATION CHALLENGE How can employees be involved in innovation? That’s the question CNP Assurances asked itself. And the initiatives have created a real spark. Pierre-Alain Lesaulnier talks about the full range of them, from hackathons to the Open Innovation Challenge, which he runs. Our goal was to get as many employees as we could together and to enable them to take part. We set up an IT platform and invited CNP Assurances employees from across Europe to log in to find out about the themes we had chosen and to get together in teams to come up with ideas for projects. Of the forty or so projects put forward, more than one-third came from the European subsidiaries! Our employees and customers were asked to “like” their favourites. The top 1O projects were then reviewed by a panel of experts, who listened to pitches from the teams and cut the field down to a shortlist of five – three from France, one from Spain and one from Cyprus. The projects were nurtured for four months in an incubator before the prizewinners presented their prototypes to a single panel of judges, explaining their business model, their target and, where applicable, the technology solution. The judges gave the go-ahead for four projects to enter production. The fifth project, which has lofty ambitions, could lead to a change in strategy for the subsidiary in Cyprus.
Distribution and business development Sales force, coordination, steering: active support for partner networks.
Business management Purchasing, accounting, management control, treasury: create value for all stakeholders.
The Gold Argus award for managerial innovation in 2O18 went to the first Open Innovation Challenge held by CNP Assurances. Overall, 953 employees worked on ways of improving customer relationship management for eight months as part of the contest.