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Strategy and business model

Ageas’s new 3-year strategic cycle Impact24 kicked off in 2022. The plan aims to steer Ageas towards long-term sustainable growth, built on the Group’s well-diversified profile and strong core franchises.

Strategy and business model

A unique business model

Out of its group-wide purpose and values, a clear set of strategic choices and unique business model, Ageas aims to create value for all its stakeholders: customers, employees, partners, investors and society.

Strong fundamentals

Ageas has a clear purpose to be a ‘Supporter of your life’ and puts forward a set of core aspirational values: Care, Dare, Deliver and Share. These describe the behaviours and principles that represent who Ageas is and how it works.

Ageas offers Life and Non-Life solutions to millions of Retail and Business customers and is also engaged in reinsurance activities.

Ageas helps customers anticipate, manage and cover their risks through a range of products designed for their needs today and in the future. By developing products and services beyond insurance, the company also aims to respond to new needs and priorities in a rapidly changing world.

Active in 14 countries across Europe and Asia, Ageas is distinguished by its expertise in partnerships. Ageas has developed long-term agreements with market-leading local partners, financial institutions and distributors allowing it to stay close to the customer. Ageas will continue to strengthen those partnerships and is gradually exploring to move in ecosystems that provide mutual benefit, now and for the future.

It goes without saying that Ageas can only deliver on its promises with the support of appropriately skilled and committed employees and capital provided by shareholders.

Ageas, alongside others in the sector, operates in a dynamic legislative and regulatory context, taking into account Solvency II, Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (Mifid), and, more recently the updated IFRS regulation, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), EU taxonomy and Sustainable Finance Disclosures Regulation (SFDR). Regulation or voluntary frameworks also extend to the UN Principles for Responsible Investments (PRI), UNEP FI Principles for Sustainable Insurance (PSI), The United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) and Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDG) and principles around climate change such as the Task force for Climate related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) guidelines. And there is more to come, for example the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) expected to come into effect as of the accounting year 2024.

Different business activities

Ageas’s business model generates several types of income streams:

  • Insurance underwriting: These results come from the inflows from the collected insurance policy premiums minus the claims and related expenses. The essence of insurance is the pooling or mutualisation of the risks of insured individuals or corporates brought together into a larger portfolio of insured assets. The customer pays single or regular premiums to cover risks related to Life, Home, Car, Travel, and more specific types of risks which Ageas insures. Ageas in turn pays out claims in case of an adverse event. Fee income may also come from other sources in services beyond insurance.
  • Reinsurance underwriting: Ageas decided in 2015 to set up an internal reinsurance activity which allows it to pool group reinsurance protection, retain a larger part of the risk covered for its own account and manage the diversification benefits intrinsic to its solvency framework. In 2020, Ageas acquired a 25% stake in Taiping Re and also started to participate in existing Life reinsurance programmes of its operational companies with the ambition to further develop the reinsurance expertise and exposure. This year, Ageas decided to open its reinsurance activities to third parties, operating under the brand Ageas Re, and will start underwriting for the year 2023.
  • Investments: The investment of premiums into revenue-generating assets, such as government or corporate bonds, loans, equities, or real estate, generate additional financial returns. The Group invests in a wide and diversified set of assets spread over many industries. In that way, Ageas actively supports the economy and society while generating a financial return that benefits in first instance its policyholders, and in a second step flows back to its shareholders or debtholders.
Ageas's business model
Ageas's business model

Impact24, a long-term sustainable growth strategy

Ageas considers what it does today to be a stepping-stone towards where the Group sees itself in the future. The choices and investments made with Impact24 are not just for the next three years but for the years that follow on through 2030 and beyond.

Long-term thinking

The Group’s internally developed Horizon Scan, using human and artificial intelligence, allows Ageas to continuously monitor the most significant emerging trends, which have served as the backbone of the Impact24 plan.

Impact24 provides Ageas with a clear direction going forward, but also allows for flexibility to act upon a range of available global opportunities, changing local market and environmental dynamics, and different evolving scenarios along the way. The plan foresees risk mitigation and investments in future trends that are likely to impact the world, not only by 2024 but even by 2030 and beyond. By acting today, the Group can ensure that tomorrow it remains relevant for its customers and a leader in the markets in which it operates.

Growing the business

In developing Impact24, Ageas continued to recognise the benefit of a well-diversified and well-balanced portfolio, and the resilience this brings to the Group.

Firstly, the plan aims to unlock the full potential of the Core, the existing activities of the Group. This includes taking a growing share of the market within each country and improving distribution and commercial excellence for its customers. The further deployment of technology and data and enhancement of the operational efficiency allow to progress and deal with fluctuating market dynamics.

Secondly, to fuel additional growth, Ageas focuses on opportunities in adjacent business where Ageas has the capability to participate and create impact. The Group stimulates the groupwide development of new engines with opportunities for growth in the long run: Health, Protection, Digital Platforms and Reinsurance. Home, Mobility and Life & Savings can be some of our local companies’ priorities.

Finally, the Group’s resilience is ensured through its unique footprint - a mix of geographically spread mature markets and high growth markets. In Impact24, Ageas confirms its belief in local empowerment allowing it to stay close to its customers in each market, underpinned by Group synergies where it creates additional value. The Group will continue to strengthen and diversify its market leader positions in Europe and Asia, with an increased focus on Non-Life, Health or Life protection. New capability or distribution partnerships will support the Group in venturing into new areas of growth.

Impact24
Impact24

Putting Sustainability at the heart

Ageas recognises it has a duty of care and responsibility to today’s generation and to those to come. Through the Impact24 plan, Ageas wants to have a positive and lasting impact on the lives of the people it works with - employees and partners - and the people it works for - customers, investors, and society at large. That is why sustainability must sit at the heart of everything that Ageas does.

Moving forward Ageas intends to concentrate on four areas of impact where it can best leverage its expertise and make the greatest difference, backed by clear targets:

  • People: Creating a Great place to Grow for employees.
  • Products: Increasing the offer of transparent products and services that create economic and societal value, stimulating customers in their own journey and transition towards a more sustainable and inclusive world.
  • Investments: Strengthening the Group’s responsible investment approach and contributing to solutions around societal issues.
  • Planet: Reducing the environmental impact across the globe.

In this context, Ageas is underwriting the UN Principles for Responsible Investments and Net Zero Asset Owner Alliance (NZAOA) for its investments, the UNEP FI Principles for Sustainable Insurance for underwriting and is a signatory to the UN Global Compact. And Ageas made a commitment to adhere to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). Based on Ageas’s core competences, it chose to actively work around ten SDGs.

Staying accountable

Impact24 is designed to deliver a top performance for all stakeholders. Accountability is ensured through clear KPIs and targets, allowing Ageas and its stakeholders to track the Group’s progress in a disciplined way. Next to the financial and operating targets, the new non-financial and sustainability targets strengthen Ageas’s commitment to create both economic and societal value.

SDG
SDG