Warsaw (Puls Biznesu) – The bank wants to launch insurers. It is going to spend PLN 33m in the first phase of the project and offer cheaper and simpler products than rivals do.
BRE Bank decided to launch insurance offer in January 2007.
“We want to operate in life and asset insurance. The preliminary name is BRE Ubezpieczenia”, Slawomir Lachowski, BRE Bank CEO said.
The bank will invest PLN 33m (EUR 8.3m) in both companies, including PLN 15m to secure the companies until they break even. They will when 5 percent of mBank and MultiBank clients decide to insure there life, flat or car.
In France, Italy and Benelux, the banks sell over 50 percent of life insurances and are getting bigger and bigger stakes of the other insurance market.
“In Poland, everybody has been talking about it for years. Banks were successful in selling investment products in form of life insurance in the last two years, but in classic insurance market they have below 1 percent”, BRE Bank head said.
He expects that the clients of mBank and Multibank will be core clients of the new company. He wants to offer the insurance via internet, call center and bank outlets.
“BRE Bank needed fiver years to convince 1.5m Poles to change the way they use banking services while mBank and MultiBank became the leaders of innovative products. Now, a time has come for a revolution in insurance. Within three years, BRE Bank will have about 2.5m retail clients. We estimate that their insurance payments will constitute up to 20 percent of the whole market”, Slawomir Lachowski explained.
(PLN 1 = EUR 0.251)