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.
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:
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.
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:
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.