Bianca Tetteroo, CEO, Achmea (Netherlands) discusses how Achmea’s international presence strengthens its overall strategy and the organisation's commitment to its core values while allowing the company to evolve with the changing insurance landscape. Tetteroo also reflects on her leadership journey as the first female CEO of a large Dutch financial institution, illustrating her approach to fostering an inclusive workplace, promoting innovation, and maintaining progressive HR policies. From embracing AI responsibly to achieving ambitious climate goals, she outlines how Achmea is building a future-ready organisation, and the crucial role that international networks like ICMIF play in fostering innovation and sharing best practices across the industry.
How does Achmea's international presence contribute to its overall strategy?
Growth is an important part of our strategy. Especially in countries outside the Netherlands. We serve clients in 14 countries, mostly in Europe. Premium volume outside the Netherlands saw 19% growth in the first six months of 2024.
We strive to grow by leveraging our core competences. In the Netherlands, for example, we provide insurance solutions through Rabobank, with Garanti Bank doing the same in Turkey.
In the Netherlands and Greece, we’re already working with state-of-the-art online insurance platforms, which we aim to roll out to other countries.
Growing our presence in other countries helps boost our scale, which – in addition to providing economies of scale – helps build diversified portfolios. Our customer base for glass house insurance is spread throughout western Europe, benefiting the risk profile.
As a cooperative insurer, how does Achmea stay true to its values while adapting to the evolving insurance landscape?
A good example is our current strategic framework, which my team and I redesigned when I started as CEO. Besides putting sustainability at the heart of the strategy, we have identified four societal domains where we aim to add value for clients and society at large by solving key issues.
That’s why we’re looking to address the shortage of suitable homes for elderly people by developing specific real estate solutions for this group, for example, and are coming up with solutions to keep climate-related damage insurable. We are a true long-term partner to our clients and make decisions from a long-term perspective.
In 2021, Achmea launched its new purpose: “Sustainable living. Together”. Could you share some examples of how this purpose has been operationalised within Achmea’s current strategy.
Absolutely, our purpose is an important element of the strategic framework I was talking about. It is at the very heart of what we do. As I mentioned, we will be launching various initiatives to add value in four societal domains.
At the same time, our purpose also drives our investment managers to consistently support sustainable resolutions in shareholders meetings. It is also the reason why we have decided to give all our Dutch employees a climate budget of EUR 2,500 and why we offer green loans to clients. In other words, our purpose influences our business decisions, our position as an employer, and how we attract and retain talent.
As the first female CEO of a large Dutch financial institution, what unique perspectives or experiences do you feel you bring to the role? Can you share any specific initiatives or changes you've implemented since becoming CEO that reflect your leadership style and vision for the company?
I am convinced that good leadership is not determined or defined by gender. It is about making the right choices and creating a good working climate.
As a leader, your first responsibility is to create a good team. My team is the Achmea board and I am delighted with their versatile mix of qualities and perspectives, and the fact that there is a 50/50 gender mix. I don’t know whether it is due to my female touch, but I believe in the power of diverse teams, approachability and visibility. That was one of the reasons why we moved the Achmea board to offices next to the central hall. To be more visible and closer to our employees.
Achmea has progressive HR policies. Can you elaborate on this and tell us how they support employee engagement and your position in the labour market?
Being a good employer has always been important to Achmea. We intend to innovate and improve our employee experience day by day. In this process of continuous innovation, we have already made great strides that have put us in a good position to attract and keep talent. Let me give you some examples:
In 2021, Achmea put a 34-hour working week into its Collective Labour Agreement, giving employees the chance to better combine work, learning, caring and volunteering. We know that our employees highly appreciate this opportunity, especially the younger generation.
We invest in employee participation. Colleagues were closely involved in the development of our current CLA, as we asked all employees to provide input and gave them the chance to vote.
Our climate budget is another important initiative. Both Achmea as an organisation and our employees individually care greatly about sustainability. Therefore, from January 2023, all our employees have a EUR 2,500 net sustainability budget for sustainability measures in and around the home. With this budget, we put sustainability within reach for employees.
How are you developing the next generation of leaders?
Leadership brings our story to life, focuses our strategy and ensures disciplined execution.
We have programmes for our top leadership teams, for new managers and for our trainees and talents alike. An important principle of all these programmes is the concept of 1-Achmea: the joint, consistent pursuit of impact. We pay attention to our purpose, our core values but also to breaking free from patterns that prevent us from performing.
On top of that, we work on developing skills that enable learning and change at deeper levels. Feelings, thoughts, beliefs, values and needs (the submerged part of our ‘iceberg’) drive behaviour and behaviour drives results. This awareness will help us hone the skills we need to sustainably change our behaviour and will lead to better results. Our programmes also link leadership development to business practice in order accomplish our ambitions and perform without losing sight of the people.
What about your climate goals. Are you on track? And how does Achmea engage with stakeholders, including customers and investors on sustainability issues?
We published an update on our climate transition plan in August. We are on track to achieve our interim targets to reduce carbon emissions related to our corporate investments and real estate portfolio.
In addition, we have a new target to allocate 10% of Achmea’s own risk investments to impact investments by 2025 (approximately EUR 4 billion). We will invest more in companies and projects that generate sustainable energy, such as wind and solar energy, and in sustainable healthcare real estate. To achieve this, we will leverage the expertise of Achmea Investment Management and Achmea Real Estate, specialists in investment solutions that deliver both financial and social returns.
We are very active in engaging external stakeholders. Achmea Investment Management is a global top three supporter of sustainable shareholder resolutions. We have our own engagement team for this purpose and are also member of several alliances in order to foster collaboration with other investors.
We offer our customers financial solutions to make their homes and offices more sustainable and we work with partners – such as PV panel vendors and installers - to offer clients end-to-end support in implementing these solutions too.
Can you tell us how Achmea is exploring the use of AI in various aspects of its operations? And how do you ensure that AI technologies are deployed responsibly?
As part of our innovation strategy, we continuously invest in new technologies to improve our services for clients. In addition to the ongoing development of our current AI applications, we have set up our own AchmeaGPT platform.
Various projects are currently underway to explore how Generative AI can have additional benefits for our clients and our organisation by developing and implementing various use cases within a safe environment.
In order to make sure AI is used safely, we have developed an ethical framework with the Dutch sector, in addition to taking further steps to safeguard the responsible use of AI at Achmea.
Can you discuss how growth, innovation and differentiation go together at Achmea?
A recent example of growth & differentiation is the announcement of Achmea Investment Management’s acquisition of Blue Sky Group. This means we will onboard new professionals as well as interesting new clients, including the KLM pension funds. After this major M&A transaction, our AUM will increase with EUR 25 billion, accelerating our growth strategy.
Factors that helped us winning this transaction were our ESG capabilities and our reputation for and expertise in responsible investing. The latter was also one of the reasons why, earlier this year, the ING pension fund chose us as their investment manager.
In what ways does Achmea leverage international networks, like ICMIF, to foster innovation and learn about and/or share best practices?
These networks are very valuable to us, because they enable us to discuss questions we all run into in a non-competitive environment and learn from the experiences of other like-minded companies in different markets. You learn something new from every meeting or webinar.
You might not realise it at the time, and it may take weeks or a full year to happen, but it’s all too common to find a solution to a problem only to remember that you got it from one of your networks.
