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The allfinanz alliance between the big bank and Winterthur failed twenty years ago. Now Credit Suisse is trying again with Winterthur’s buyer, Axa. Which is different this time.
Bancassurance is the name of the new comprehensive financing: Credit Suisse (CS) and the largest Swiss real estate insurer, Axa, are launching a joint digital offering, as the two Swiss financial heavyweights announced on Wednesday.
The focus of the cooperation is the CSX banking application, which the large bank will launch on the market next week. In the future, Axa’s insurance products will also be available through the digital channel. However, this will only start in the first quarter of 2021. The new offering is reportedly focused on the topics of life and everyday life.
The collaboration is not surprising, and still.
I bought the whole cow
This is not surprising, because Axa and CS have long worked together in other business areas and share a common business history: between 1997 and 2006, the predecessor Winterthur belonged to the banking group until it sold the insurance to its French competitor Axa. Also the leadership of the CS had until the president Urs Rohner He always suggested that there is potential in “Bancassurance 2.0”.
The new link is surprising, however, because the Allfinanz idea ended in costly failure with the merger of CS and Winterthur. 1997 led the then president of the bank Rainer E. Good and Winterthur handlebars Peter spaelti banking and insurance together under the umbrella of the CS group.
Shortly before that, the acting bank manager had Lukas Mühlemann It is also not necessary to buy a whole cow to drink a glass of milk.
Alone on the rice table
Allfinanz turned out to be a build that worked on the drawing board, but never in practice. At least not in Switzerland. There was no coordination or cultural fit between insurance and banking vendors: customers buy banking products more frequently, insurance is purchased once
The failure with Winterthur hastened the departure of CEO Mühlemann in 2002; was then his successor Oswald Grübel, who sold Winterthur to Axa when CS ran into trouble.
What remains the same
After two decades, “Winterthur Reloaded” is still on the CS side. It is true that things are different now: today, allfinanz no longer depends on people with motivations different from those of insurance and banking. This is because everything runs digitally on a platform where the customer takes what they want. Several other vendors have already demonstrated how finews.ch reported. Bancassurance is facing a renaissance.
However, in the end, and this is the same today as at the turn of the millennium, the customer decides the success of the model. At that moment, allfinanz ended the lack of interest in the market. The brave new world of financial apps is not immune to this.
Customers will notice fairly quickly if their needs are really the center of attention, or if it is the well-known “product push” through new digital channels. If the suspicion is confirmed, they will move quickly.
Will there be a relocation of European financial centers due to Corona and Brexit?
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Yes, London will lose much of its importance.
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Yes, Frankfurt will emerge as the big winner.
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There is a division between different cities.
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Yes, Switzerland will become significantly more important.
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No, everything remains the same.
