Specific characteristics of our business model

Being a bank-insurer makes us proactive and comprehensive

Our basic activities are banking and insurance, including asset management. However, we are more than just a bank and an insurance company: we are a bank-insurer, and as such we want to respond in a proactive and holistic way to all our clients’ financial needs, in the broadest sense. Our bank-insurance concept offers clients a number of benefits, including a comprehensive one-stop financial service that meets all their banking, asset management and insurance needs. Moreover, working together in the area of bank-insurance offers major benefits to the group in terms of diversifying income, enhanced risk diversification, additional sales potential and significant cost-savings and synergies.

Being geographically focused allows us to balance our growth 

Geographically, we concentrate on a strict selection of core markets in Belgium and Central and Eastern Europe, namely the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Bulgaria. In this way, we operate within a mix of mature and growth markets, while also taking advantage of the additional growth and catch-up potential for financial services in Central and Eastern Europe. We are also present in Ireland. In the years ahead, our operations in that country will focus on raising profitability by developing the retail business.

Being locally embedded enables us to tailor our solutions to local needs

In the core countries we want to build and deepen sustainable local relationships with private individuals, SMEs and mid-caps. Local responsiveness is very important to us in that regard. It implies that we understand these local clients better, that we pick up signals effectively and respond to them proactively, and that we offer products and services tailored to these local needs. It also means that we focus on the sustainable development of the markets and communities in which we operate.