Are there any plans to expand your distribution model?
We are constantly working on new relationships, especially within the private banking segment, but we are also trying to find other types of connections, such as with large legal and accounting firms. The latter is an ongoing project. It is part of the strategy of working with high net-worth and mobile customers in Europe who have sophisticated planning needs.
In your previous role you were focused on IT. Is there anything SEB Life is working on in terms of technology?
We are investing a lot of money in technology, both inside and outside Sweden. There are two real reasons for doing this. The traditional reason comes from trying to be more efficient internally by automating processes and bringing down costs.
Today there is also a much more customer-oriented agenda to make sure we are visible on the clients’ iPads, iPhones and websites. We are putting in as much effort as we can right now to see if we can increase the digitalisation agenda for clients in most of the countries we work in.
You have been in the life industry a long time. What changes have you noticed?
In Sweden we have a clear trend, which I think goes for all European countries. People are living longer and the pension systems across Europe are under a lot of pressure. They are starting to realise they will have a problem getting a sufficient pension from the state. In almost all countries people are becoming enlightened about the fact they need a private pension solution.
The wealth in the world, and also in Europe, is growing, so we will see many more wealthy people coming out year on year.
Private wealth is growing in Europe and so is the pressure on the pension systems. We will see a correlation towards greater investments for retirement in the future, across all of the countries we operate in.
The other long-term trend we can see is that customers are much better informed and their expectations of service, quality and value is much greater than in the past. That is being driven by technology but also, of course, by the regulatory agenda. So to operate in the life business today companies need substantially higher levels of expertise and resources than in the past.
You said SEB Life clients are high net-worth. What are you are looking at for people still in the wealth creation phase?
For SEB, following that strategy has meant setting up a more localised, harmonised company. For instance, in Sweden, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Denmark, we operate locally with an insurance company but the focus is more on pensions rather than investments. It is a part of the insurance business that we don’t run cross-border from Ireland.
I think retail clients need to go more local and avoid seeking cross-border solutions.
Looking ahead, are there any new initiatives we can expect for Ireland and Europe?
We launched a new product in Sweden that we call Wealth Protector. It is a way of trying to protect wealth for the next generation and it allows you to connect life cover products to your investments.
It comes in two levels. The first option protects your premiums. If the value in your investment is going below the premium, in the case of death the original premium value is paid back to the beneficiaries.
The more sophisticated version follows your investment going up as well. If the value of the money you put in as a premium goes up by, say, 10% and then the market suddenly goes down, we will keep your death benefit on that level, the premium plus 10%.
We do this on a monthly basis, meaning you can ‘lock-in’ gains and protect them in case of death. This lock-in does not apply on surrender and, as a result, the cost can be very reasonable for the level of cover.
This is something we are focusing on for the high net-worth and family office segments because they need a long-term perspective on their investments.
It is only available in Sweden for now but we are launching the premium protection version in Italy in December. After that we will look into all of the countries or markets one by one.
