Insurance Connect | April 2025
- Looking at data from a recent survey, 37% of Italians have never heard of the possibility of purchasing insurance services from a bank: a considerable percentage considering how many decades bancassurance has been present in Italy as a distribution practice. How do you explain this data, from your point of view?
The protection market is driven by supply. So, if Italians are not aware of the possibility of purchasing insurance services from a bank, the responsibility lies with a poorly proactive and poorly personalized commercial proposition.
Proposing insurance policies to everyone via email – as highlighted by 34% of Italians – is commercially ineffective and counterproductive for the credibility of the proponent and the proposal.
The results are obtained by segmenting customers by attitudes, behaviors and needs and then targeting the offer and placing protection specialists alongside bank managers.
If we consider that 66% of Italians keep liquidity in their current account to cover themselves from risks and inconveniences, the real challenge for the industry is to help customers defuse the risk with proper insurance coverage and manage savings efficiently.
One suspects that if this does not happen, it is also because the trust that customers have in banks and insurance companies still has ample room for improvement.
- Tensions in the life sector should ease in 2025: which products will benefit the most? How can banks take advantage of this to give new value to their customers?
With the lowering of rates, savings management products in general and life sector products in particular should regain the space they deserve.
The lengthening of the average life span, which is often accompanied by a worsening of health, will certainly make Long Term Care (LTC) policies more necessary.
Even the key man people policies currently subscribed to by less than 0.5% of the over four million entrepreneurs who own micro-businesses, the true backbone of our country, have enormous potential and would ensure the continuity of many Italian excellences.
These are products that need to be explained and understood. The central theme is that of the correct commercial proposition: a life sector product is not subscribed for the yield it offers in the short term but also and above all to protect oneself and to take advantage of the tax advantages.
Even in this sector, the issue of the proposer’s skills and the trust of end customers is central, and has often been put to the test (think of the Eurovita case).
- The moves of UniCredit and Crédit Agricole around Banco Bpm, the events of Mps, the activism of insurance partnerships, an uncertain and stimulating panorama: is it possible to identify trends and make predictions on the assets in 2025?
All the M&A operations underway in the banking, financial and insurance sectors have a single common denominator: the search for commission margins.
High rates have allowed banks to achieve the best results ever, now the party is over, the pressure on costs will resume, it is essential to acquire market shares and internalize the sources of revenue.
Behind these operations there are national and international champions of asset management – Anima and Amundi – insurance companies – Generali (which will join Natixis), AXA Investment Managers (acquired by BNP Paribas), Allianz and CNP (orphans of the joint ventures with UniCredit).
The lending sector, i.e. credit to individuals and SMEs, also fits into this context, with the OPAS launched by Banca Ifis on illimity.
In 2025 we will witness: 1) concentration of operators; 2) internalization of product factories; 3) growth of low-cost (ETF) or high-margin (private market) savings management products; 4) growth of life products, especially third and fourth branches.
- What room for growth is there today for network banks? How much will they be able to count in the future in the balance of company revenues?
The room for growth of financial advisor networks is still high, today they serve an average of five million very satisfied customers.
Among the many reasons for the success of networks is that there is not a single model but different models.
There are networks that belong to banking groups to which they are synergistically connected, and that are able to offer a set of products and services that go well beyond financial advice alone.
Then there are networks that belong to insurance groups that integrate the two souls of protection and investments, these will count more and more in the balance of revenues of the companies to which they belong.
What all these realities have in common is the centrality of the financial advisor and his ability to act as a pivot between the different souls of his client.
The financial advisor can propose investment solutions and integrate them upstream and downstream with an offer of credit, protection and other services requested by the customer.
- The new digital competitors of banks (e.g. Revolut, N26) are becoming more and more aggressive and it seems that online banks can succeed where online insurance has failed: what risks and what opportunities for the banking and insurance sector?
Successful companies, whether they are insurance companies, financial consultancy networks, banks or companies that provide credit, all have a strong point: the mix of valid professionals and cutting-edge digital platforms.
While it is true that having the best professionals is not enough to create a successful company, it is equally true that a purely digital offer is – to date – destined for a market niche.
The banking and insurance sector is currently driven by supply and not demand, it follows that a quality offer capable of generating added value for the customer and margins for companies passes above all through the people and professionals who work there.
Certainly, if in the future managed savings products and insurance policies were to become pure commodities, like goods that can be purchased online, like a hairdryer on Amazon, and if human intelligence were to succumb to artificial intelligence, everything could change.
At present, it is difficult to imagine that this could happen in the medium to long term.
Nicola Ronchetti