Vinicius Albernaz, the former CEO of Bradesco Seguros, spent the entire year of 2022 talking to insurance companies and private pension managers, with the HR of dozens of companies and regulators in the sector.
The executive, now a partner at Vinci Partners, wanted to delve deeply into the problems of private pensions, a R$1.4 trillion market that grows 13% per year with the famous PGBLs and VGBLs — but which, according to him, still has an experience bad and no technology.
“Insurance companies are entities that developed and still operate with legacy systems, which generate a very bad experience for the customer at all stages, from contracting the plan to monitoring the portfolio,” Vinicius told Brazil Journal.
“Furthermore, the industry is very focused on selling equity fund X, or fixed income fund Y. There are few people looking at the client as a whole, in a holistic view, of portfolio composition.”
According to him, the entire market — be it the broker, the independent agent or the bank manager — is “addicted” to selling the specific product (and, normally, the one that pays the most fees).
“We need to get out of this transactional model and into the customer personalization model, of what makes sense for each person, according to their age and goals,” said the executive.
This diagnosis was the basis for the creation of MIO, an insurance company that Vinicius built from scratch within the Vinci structure, a resource manager with more than R$65 billion in assets.
MIO wants to differentiate itself precisely in the problems that Vinci mapped, delivering an experience that is “much simpler, more agile, lighter and less bureaucratic” and serving the customer with a more holistic vision.
The manager’s bet is in line with the movement that other global management firms have already made in the past.
Blackstone, KKR and Apollo also have integrated insurance companies with alternative asset management. “In a long-term view it makes a lot of sense,” Vinci CEO Alessandro Horta told Brazil Journal.
MIO obtained its license from SUSEP in November 2022 and the first pension plans were sold in January last year.
According to Vinicius, the insurtech spent its first year operating in beta, focused on friends and family and Vinci employees.
Now the insurance company is preparing to attack the open sea.
To achieve this, one of the main bets is the portability of pension plans from other insurers, “with a simpler and more digital portability experience than the competition,” said Horta.
Da Vinci’s bet comes at a time when the private pension market is beginning to experiment with decentralization. Today, almost 90% of the market is still in the hands of large insurance companies, linked to large banks such as Banco do Brasil, Bradesco, Itaú, Santander and Safra.
The concentration has already been even greater: in recent years, groups such as XP, BTG and Icatu have stolen share from the incumbents.
“We don’t have a specific market share number that we are looking for, but we think that this trend of deconcentration continues and that we will be able to capture an important part of the pie,” said Vinicius.
According to him, MIO is focused on corporate pension plans — which account for 10% of the total market of R$1.3 trillion — and on ‘ultra high net worth’ families that are already clients of da Vinci funds.
One bet is that with the change in the law on exclusive funds there will be a large migration of resources that were in these vehicles to social security, which has long-term tax benefits.
Vinicius recognizes that the corporate market is a fraction of the individual market, but says that it is often the first contact people have with pension plans.
“Furthermore, at the corporate level the experience is even worse. We know of cases in which, for an extraordinary contribution to be made, the insurance company requires the physical signing of contracts. When the employee leaves, they often do not have a direct digital relationship channel with the insurance company. The entire onboarding and offboarding process is very manual.”
Vinci already operated in the private pension market, but only as a manager of funds, which were offered by different insurance companies to their clients. In this format, it captured a portion of the administration fee, which is roughly divided between the manager, insurer and distributor.
“By having the management and liabilities, we now have access to a larger fee pool and direct access to the client,” said Alessandro. “The insurance company is central to this market because it is the insurer who passes the balance, the tax he has to pay, and takes care of the entire experience.”
Pedro Arbex and Geraldo Samor