INSURANCE| 16.12.2021
MAPFRE forges a network of bancassurance partnerships to strengthen its leadership in Latin America
Latin America has played a prominent role in MAPFRE’s internationalization process, which began decades ago and helped turn the insurance company into a global group. Expansion in the region began in the 1980s and has continued over time, evolving through different models.
Currently, its bancassurance partners are one of its greatest avenues of growth: MAPFRE has agreements with more than 50 companies in 15 countries, making it the leading company in this modality in the region.
These partnerships multiply MAPFRE’s insurance points of sale. To illustrate their importance, the insurance company has around 5,000 offices worldwide, while its products are offered at more than 11,200 bank branches. These agreements enable it to reach a wider audience and ensure much greater capillarity within the countries, two key aspects to consolidating its position in a region as complex and diverse as Latin America.
MAPFRE is present through its banking partners’ branches in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, Peru, Chile, Paraguay, Argentina, and Uruguay. Although MAPFRE is active on the five continents, Latin America is the area where these collaborations have proliferated the most. The group is working this way in 15 of the region’s 18 countries.
These operations, which number more than 50, use various formulas. Nine of them take place through companies with equity interest or exclusivity agreements. Among them, Banco do Brasil, MAPFRE’s largest bancassurance operation in the world, stands out for its volume. Other banks with which MAPFRE maintains this closer collaboration include the Mexican bank Compartamos, specialized in micro loans, with which it operates in Mexico, Peru and Guatemala; Actinver, also in Mexico, Sudameris in Paraguay and Banco Hipotecario Dominicano – León, the largest in the Dominican Republic. It has distribution agreements with its other partners through their branch networks.
Latin America, a pillar for MAPFRE
MAPFRE is one of the top insurance multinationals in Latin America and the leader in the Non-Life business. It serves some 15 million Latin American customers, and nearly a third of global premiums come from the region. The group directly employs more than 14,000 professionals in nearly 1,800 offices there, with more than 50,000 intermediaries between agents, brokers and representatives. According to Jesús Martínez Castellanos, MAPFRE’s CEO in LATAM, “MAPFRE’s importance in the global insurance industry would not be the same without its strong commitment to Latin America for more than three decades.”
“We have a vast network of financial partners throughout the region. Our main alliance is in Brazil, with our Banco do Brasil partners, but we also have more than 50 financial partners throughout all the countries where we operate, and they help boost our products’ distribution capacity in Latin America,” Martinez Castellanos explains.