Christian Gibot (Cardif Lux Vie): All the Ingredients for a Tailor-Made Solution
"If Luxembourg life insurance fell into standardization, it would lose its reason to exist," explains Christian Gibot, CEO of Cardif Lux Vie. Thanks to increasing digitalization making it possible to free up time for support, contracts are being drawn up in an ever more collaborative manner with advisors helping to align with a client’s wealth and inheritance strategy.
What main advantages does Luxembourg life insurance offer?
Why does a French or Italian resident take out Luxembourg insurance?
Firstly safety: the regulations here provide sophisticated guarantee mechanisms. Then, the regulatory framework allows clients to implement their wealth and inheritance planning in a personalized way. Finally, Luxembourg life insurance offers a much wider range of investments than those available in the various domestic markets, which is key in terms of diversification. In the context of persistently low interest rates limiting the attractiveness of investments in general funds, Luxembourg life insurance and our ability to assemble all the ingredients of a tailor-made solution, within the framework of a contract, creates a unique opportunity. With our clients, we start with a blank page and structure (with them and their advisor) a real response to their needs. As an insurer, we provide the legal framework for life insurance contracts that are recognised in many European countries. We also ensure that each client has the implementation of his personalized management (choice of manager, custodian bank, the investment strategy or the underlying assets, etc.), evolving throughout the relationship. Cardif Lux Vie is thus positioning itself as a pan-European, unit-linked life insurance platform, at the center of the wealth management ecosystem.
How are the requirements of your partners and customers changing?
Client goals are changing with an increasing appeal for sophisticated financial assets. We must therefore adapt and evolve to meet this new demand. For example, with private equity funds where interest is growing, if we had kept our acceptance guidelines ten years ago, we would no longer be able to meet the new needs of our clients. Overall, our solid legal, tax, actuarial and financial expertise allows us to challenge our risk acceptance criteria to make them evolve. Saying that we are transforming: we respond well to new expectations with a very wide choice of banks and managers; a fluidity of interactions between all the players; more types of assets and adapted risk-taking. These all fit well with our mission, which is to make insurance more accessible. If Luxembourg life insurance fell into standardization, it would lose its reason to exist. We must be flexible and agile while ensuring a legal framework and impeccable security.
How did you adapt your offer in a context where digitalisation is emerging?
The situation has changed, as have the expectations of our customers and partners. At Cardif Lux Vie, we have taken advantage of the unprecedented period of the past two years to carry out major collective projects to improve our quality of service, but also to simplify and sustainably streamline the journey of our customers and partners. To accelerate our transformation and bring the action closer to decision-making, a team of employees have formed a Digital Squad, working in "agile" mode since the start of the year. We are therefore very proud to announce today the deployment of fully digital processes of subscription and withdrawals for french residents with electronic signature and document upload. Our platform will be gradually enriched with other financial transactions and extended to other geographic regions.