At CNP Assurances, we believe we owe our longevity to our ability to adapt constantly.
It demonstrates we can deliver solutions to the big questions facing insurers of how to provide protection over the long term.
Chief Executive Officer of CNP Assurances 02 OPEN ANNUAL REPORT 2019-2020
Design and production: – Photo credits: Aldo Sperber; Gettyimages / ArtMarie, Carlos Sanchez Pereyra, Dusanpetkovic,
role is to shield people from the effects of crises and also to ride out the storm.”
A. L. An insurer’s role is to shield its customers from the effects of crises.
A. L. Persistently low interest rates, a real drag on the savings of the middle classes are the first priority.
We need to enhance the returns we offer savers in France, while keeping their savings safe, channel a higher proportion into carefully selected unit-linked products, and provide security without sticking purely to euro-denominated vehicles. The second priority for the insurance sector is addressing the emergence of a new category of planetwide risks – the pandemic with its myriad consequences and global warming.
A. L. We immediately swung into action – together with our partners –
to support our policyholders. We gave both business and self-employed customers breathing space by extending their premium payment periods. We automatically postponed the term creditor insurance payments for young people qualifying for postponement of their student loan repayments, with no loss of their cover.
Together with our fellow insurers in France, we covered time off work for policyholders with long-term illnesses and pregnant women. Going beyond the contractual arrangements, we decided to cover time off work where policyholders had to stay home to look after children from the very first day on which the schools closed. We also reached out to those in need by taking various measures for people badly hit by the crisis, such as carers, students, elderly people living on their own and women at risk of domestic abuse.
“I was really impressed by how we reached out to those in need and found new ways of doing things.”
The pandemic prompted us to accelerate all the changes underway in our organisation: it made them more vital, more urgent and more accessible too. There’s no going back on them – they’re here to stay! We intend to take homeworking to the next level. With our partners, we plan to capitalise on the recent experience of 100% digital working and pursue the development of seamless relationships with policyholders throughout the life of their policy. We have set up workgroups to enhance our value proposition through an overhaul of our savings & pension and personal risk & protection offerings and the customer experience. Lastly, recent events have given us an even keener sense of our responsibilities as a major investor and made us more determined to shift our focus towards the real economy, the environmental transition and, in a nutshell, people.
CNP Assurances has committed to spend €300 million to help revitalise the economy. Why?
investment funds. Under the programme, insurers will devote €1.5 billion to increasing
CNP Assurances has consistently met its green targets. How far do you intend to go in this direction?
planet’s climate a real chance while enabling our policyholders to make a difference with their savings.”
them. Our plans for a complete withdrawal from thermal coal are already in place.
– in forests, renewables, green bonds, and so on – to €20 billion by 2023. By doing so, we hope to give our planet’s climate a real chance while enabling our policyholders to make a difference with their savings.
We are open to and engage with the world thanks to our multi-partner, international business model. Our new ownership structure and our new plans for the future alongside
We draw our strength from being part of the publicsector financial grouping marshalled by Caisse des
(1) Wholly-owned subsidiary of Le Groupe La Poste (66%-held by Caisse des Dépôts and 34%-held by the French State).
CNP Assurances to revitalise and reinvigorate its protection solutions for people.
The effects of the crisis on the personal risk decisions people in France make are already coming to the fore. We could well see greater interest in cover against loss of employment, which is not currently very popular (4%). What surveys(1) already indicate is that people in France are now more mindful of their own mortality and interested in arranging financial cover for that scenario.
The big unknown is whether households will be able to afford this type of nonmandatory cover, as opposed to mandatory term creditor insurance, and also motor and home insurance. Insurance buyers could be put off as a result of the tough household budgeting decisions they face, which will depend on the length and depth of the looming recession.
We have set up a strategic initiative to devise the protection solutions of the future. Its remit is to analyse experiences of the pandemic and predict policyholders’
future needs. It is opening the door to a wide-ranging overhaul of the cover, services and processes we deliver, while always considering the affordability of our insurance. (1
We set aside €50 million to provide support throughout the pandemic to businesses and non-profits with close to 2 million employees in total.
The initiative will look closely at new types of cover and new solutions, changes to the service offering and more agile business processes. The first avenues being explored are adding loss of income cover to term creditor protection and incorporating special arrangements, and cover for pandemics in personal risk policies, such as scrapping deferral periods and automatically activating personal services, including home meal delivery.
insurance a new lease of life after low interest rates had taken their toll, but turbulent stock markets have now curbed enthusiasm again.
interest rates, insurers are deterring investors from 100% euro-denominated policies by charging high fees and by making access to them conditional on purchasing unit-linked investments too. With unit-linked products, investors’ capital is not guaranteed since it is invested in asset classes such as equities, bonds and property. In 2019, unit-linked investments’ share of new life insurance policies in France rose from 23%
With the future fraught with uncertainties, savers are turning to the most secure and liquid investments. That poses yet another challenge for life insurance, which, it is now clear, will have to deal with a net outflow in 2020.
The stock market turbulence caused by the health emergency did not trigger any panic selling or wholesale withdrawals, illustrating the greater maturity of Italian savers. A new multi-vehicle solution was launched in early 2020 to round out the range.
CNP Patrimoine’s wealth management specialists have now been brought together with the investment engineering teams.
The secure Pergola 90 vehicle is the first example. It can harness opportunities in the financial markets while locking in a floor value of 90% of the highest level recorded by the investment and providing the daily liquidity that allows investors to exit at any time. It was originally launched in late 2019 for CNP Assurances’ high-net-worth clients, and a mainstream version will be introduced during 2020 with an attractive balance between guarantee and returns.
CNP Assurances’ goal is to give savers peace of mind in line with the number one expectation of most customers – the initial level of capital invested in unit-linked vehicles should be contractually 100% guaranteed, come what may. The other way of reassuring investors who agree to diversify their long-term savings would be to provide pandemic cover against any losses suffered in the event of a withdrawal caused by a fresh pandemic crisis.
At La Banque Postale, for example, this will focus on the nine themes in the Conviction range to adapt to the saver’s position on the risk/
Giving contractual guarantees will no longer suffice. Going forward, unit-linked savings will need to be given a purpose by allowing clients to choose the assets matching their convictions.
Investing in sustainable development, in French infrastructure, in ageing well or simply in property, a safe haven. A difference can be made at every level, from the investment to the management agreement and even the insurance policy.
A core theme to suit every saver global, real economy, sustainability,
Europe, property, ageing well, infrastructure, emerging markets and investing for the future.
efforts to live up to its responsibility as a large-scale and long-term investor.
climate transition energy economy real interest general investing ethical responsibility social 26 OPEN ANNUAL REPORT 2019-2020
really taken off recently, CNP Assurances has long been an active proponent of the approach. Because insuring people for the past 170 years has given us a keen sense of our responsibility to society. Because our strategy is naturally guided by the common good as we are a public-sector company.
Because investing hundreds of billions of euros in savings gives us real clout. And because in today’s world policyholders want to know how their money is being used.
We first adopted an ESG approach and screened our entire equity portfolio using environmental, social and governance filters back in 2006. Then exclusions were incorporated, firstly for anti-personnel mine manufacturers in 2008, then for offshore financial centres in 2014, for coal in 2015 and finally for tobacco companies in 2020, to sharpen up the ethical footprint of our investments.
We rallied to the climate cause in 2015, setting ambitious targets for green investments, pulling out of thermal coal and decarbonising our asset portfolios.
We reached and even exceeded most of them ahead of schedule and have raised the bar even further to support the energy and environment transition.
€20 billion in green investments is what CNP Assurances has pledged to make by 2023
We have been renovating our property portfolio for the past fifteen years to achieve our target of reducing our
CO2 emissions by 40% between 2006 and 2021. The target is now well within our reach since our emissions were down 37% at year-end 2019. Our new headquarters currently under construction in the Issy-les-Moulineaux eco-district, a project with five quality accreditations and featuring positive-energy buildings, will cut our environmental footprint even further from 2022.
supports various innovative projects, including green gas, biomethane, hydrogen and green electricity, led by key French players in sustainability mobility and the environmental transition. We also invest in major French rail network projects, with high-speed lines chief among them. Transport and sustainable mobility accounted for 14% of our energy and environmental transition investments in 2019.
We are looking to achieve a new equilibrium point, forging closer, yet
Externally, digitalisation now extends to n e w s t a g e s o f r e l a t io n s h ip s w it h c u s t o m e r s
’s c u st om ers, partn e r s an d e m p lo y e e s i n
F r a n c e , It a ly and Brazil tested out 100%re m o t e r e la t io n s h ip s a n d w o r k in g p a t t e rns so m e t h in g
W e a r e b u il d in g o n t h e o v e r h a u l o f o u r i n f o r m a t io n s y s te m s a rc h ite ct ure in line with the late s t
m a rk e t e ff ic ie n c y c o n n e c t e d n e s s
o m e w orking remained widespread after th e lo c k d o w n
h is d r a m a t ic s h if t h a s p r o m p t e d u s t o s im p lif y o ur formalities and streamline our processes. C o u ld t h e s e i m p r o v e m e n ts s e rv e as an inspiration for ou r c u s to m e r j o u r n e y s ?
– something they might not otherwise have ever done. There’s no question the unprecedented situation has dramatically accelerated changes in practices, processes and tools, and made them better.
Homeworking remained widespread after the lockdown measures were officially eased, sparking discussions with our union partners on how work will be organised in the future.
Externally, digitalisation now extends to new stages of relationships with customers, as their behaviour has changed and they now do more of their business remotely than ever before. This dramatic shift has prompted us to simplify our formalities and streamline our processes. Could these improvements serve as an inspiration for our customer journeys? And could digital relationships become a channel on an equal standing with conventional solutions?
A strategic initiative has been set up to explore policyholders’ shifting behaviours and tweaks to our customer experience.
For CNP Assurances, the shift to digital technology is primarily about being as peoplefriendly as we can.
In France, the Anticipa s u p p le m e n ta ry h e a lth a nd p e r s o n a l r is k p r o t e c t io n p la n w a s d e v e l o p e d s p e c ia ll y t o c o v e r c iv il s e rv an ts w ork ing for four major
Youse, the 100% digital subsidiary of Caixa Seguridade, is a technological and customerexperience trailblazer. In a first for the Brazilian market, its motor insurance customers can tweak the cover provided by their policy directly online, without having to contact the call centre.
Spurred on by the lockdown, we took steps to simplify and streamline our business processes.
We reduced the number of questions we ask and the amount of supporting paperwork we require for new policies, and cut down on the administration involved in the smallest claims. We have set up a workgroup to look at ways of making our remote interactions smoother and examining the key issue of which channel matches up best with which application.
At CNP Assurances, our aim is to strike the right balance between the remote channel’s growing share of customer journeys and the human interaction people need at crucial times in their life, when only a face-to-face meeting with an advisor will do.
CNP Assurances is supporting the new DIALog(1) research chair in partnership with the University of Lyon-1 and the Risk Foundation.
The chairholder will explore key issues for the insurance industry arising from behavioural and environmental changes that affect the way we live our lives in an age of digital technology and artificial intelligence. Customer experience, claims management and the risks arising from longer life expectancy are three areas of research that will benefit.
Custom e r e x p e r ie n c e , c la im s m a n a g e m e n t a nd the risks arising from lo n g e r lif e r e s e a r c h
. U s in g t h e e le c tro n ic ally signed remote he alt h q ue st io n n a ir e , a t r ie d a n d tested solution re st or e th e w arm th o f the r elationship through direct c o n ta c t w h e n e v e r t h e c u s t o m e r d e s ir e s
The benefits of integrating BPCE’s and CNP Assurances’ processes came to the fore with applications by businesses for the state-guaranteed loans (PGE) to raise the cash they need to ride out the COVID-19 crisis.
UniCredit, CNP Assurances’ banking partner, had reservations about introducing phone or social media channels for insurance. Things changed with the COVID-19 pandemic as all business had to be conducted electronically. A top priority is to restore the warmth of the relationship through direct contact whenever the customer desires. CNP UniCredit
It is a new dawn for our partnershipbased way of working, which is overcoming the technical, legal and economic hurdles.
CNP Assurances has decided to put people and ethical practices at the forefront of its approach. To this end, it has appointed an artificial intelligence ethics officer and set up an AI Ethics Committee.
In France, a lm o s t a l l o u r
W e a re re th in k in g th e w a y w e w o r k, w e d is c u s s m a tt e rs a n d w e m a n a g e , a n d o ur appetite f o r s p e n d in g t im e together remains
We are rethinking the way we work, we discuss matters and we manage, and our appetite for spending time together remains undiminished.
Supported by business specialists, the Executive Committee met every morning by phone as a crisis cell to monitor our KPIs. And we performed well, demonstrating that our digital transformation had been effective.
Now the question is how to extend the option of homeworking and support the changes introduced.
Our longstanding major partnerships were extended for very long periods in 2019. Roll-out of the new arrangements will begin in 2020. CNP Assurances’
Increase of 3.5% premium income powered by: 5.6% rise in term creditor insurance growth in premium income across all regions recorded by our main partners 42.3% unit-linked products in savings
& pensions share of Group savings & pension premium income generated by unit-linked solutions
CNP Assurances’ 2019 results show the strength of our business model, which flows from our diverse businesses and our relationships with our partners around the world. We are actively involved in efforts to establish a major public-sector financial grouping by maintaining substantial financial clout and resolutely combating global warming.
Directors will consider the possibility and arrangements for paying out a dividend over the next few months.
227% This ratio reflects the strength of the Group’s balance sheet.
The strength of CNP Assurances’ position derives from its diverse geographical base and product mix combined with tight cost control.
38 million personal risk/protection policyholders worldwide 97% of the Group’s employees are covered by a collective bargaining agreement and 96% have a permanent employment contract €6 million donated Group-wide to health and social inclusion projects 50 OPEN ANNUAL REPORT 2019-2020
Have a look at our Essentials 2020 reports on the cnp.fr website.
Its core beliefs, its initiatives and its Foundation committed to levelling up health outcomes and saving lives.