On Cashback Day 2024, 5 March, German ICMIF member R+V Versicherung paid out a total of around EUR 16 million in contributions for 2023 (2023: EUR 13 million paid). The cooperative insurer said that was thanks to minor levels of claims and it meant 550,000 customers were rewarded with cashback for favourable claims history.
R+V Versicherung’s cashback programme reimburses up to ten percent of the insurance premiums paid to its customers. There is a prerequisite for this and people must be a member of a cooperative bank and have concluded a Member-Plus contract there. If a bank’s members-plus community has a favourable claims history, then the Wiesbaden-based insurer will reimburse money to that community in the following year.
R+V says this concept is appealing to more and more members of cooperative banks: the total number of customers participating in the programme has grown by almost 14 percent to more than 695,000. Around 80 percent of them now receive cashback. A refund is also available if the individual customer has reported a claim, but his banking community as a whole had a favourable claims history. Because it’s the result of the community that counts. There are currently 619 cooperative banks which have a member-plus community.
“Membership is the unique selling point of the cooperative banks,” says Jens Hasselbächer, Member of the Board of Management for Customers & Sales at R+V Versicherung. “Every single member benefits and feels the benefits of the community directly in their wallet. In addition, we are implementing the cooperative idea of ‘one for all, all for one’ together with the cooperative banks.”
New cooperation with the BVR
In order to get the cooperative banks even more on board, R+V is cooperating with the BVR (Federal Association of German Cooperative Banks and Raiffeisen Banks) for the first time this year in the membership business. The aim is to give this added value to the members even more visibility and commitment in the banks and to win new customers. The cooperation began on Cashback Day.
Cashback for six insurance products and with the R+V company health insurance fund
Money back is available for the four components of the R+V member private policy: household contents, residential buildings, liability and legal protection, as well as for the independent R+V member risk accident policy and the R+V member motor vehicle policy. The R+V company health insurance fund is also involved: anyone who is a member of a cooperative bank and the R+V company health insurance fund at the same time, has agreed on the cashback option rate and has not been admitted to hospital for one year, will receive cashback of up to EUR 60. In the case of a one-time hospital stay, EUR 30 will be refunded.
The advertising ambassador for the entire R+V membership business is the TV presenter Enie van de Meiklokjes, who can currently be seen as a baking expert in various TV formats in Germany. R+V says this fits perfectly with the marketing message of the “Get your piece of the pie” concept.
R+V achieves very good group result in 2023
More recently, the R+V Group announced that it had ended the 2023 financial year with a very good IFRS result of almost EUR one billion. In the first quarter of 2024, R+V says its domestic primary insurance revenue increased by 4.3 percent. For the year as a whole, growth is targeted above industry level.
Like the entire insurance industry, R+V says it continued to face a challenging environment in the 2023 financial year: crises, war and high inflation unsettled people and weakened the economy. All of this has also made R+V’s business more difficult in various respects. “We closed the 2023 financial year with a very good result despite adverse conditions,” summarised Norbert Rollinger, Chairman of the Board of Management, at this year’s annual press conference in Wiesbaden.
The R+V Group ended the 2023 financial year with very good earnings before taxes (IFRS) of EUR 933 million. The main reason for the strong year-on-year increase in earnings was a very good investment result of EUR 3.5 billion. In the previous year, market valuation effects as a result of the sharp rise in interest rates had led to a negative investment result, which in turn depressed the 2022 annual result.
Due to its financial strength and very good result in 2023, R+V was able to raise the total interest rate for its life insurance customers in 2024 to up to 3.0 percent. In addition, it strengthened the free RfB (provision for premium refunds) for future profit participations by more than EUR 130 million last year. “This is further proof of our overall successful, broadly diversified capital investment,” emphasised Rollinger.
The capital strength of the R+V Group also continued to increase in 2023. The SCR (Solvency Capital Requirement) ratio was 225 percent as of 31.12.2023 (after 213 percent in the previous year). R+V has been one of the financially strongest German insurance companies for years.
According to HGB accounting, R+V Versicherung AG, the parent company of the R+V Group, ended 2023 with a pre-tax profit of EUR 195 million (2022: EUR 120 million).
Ongoing contributions further strengthened
R+V’s very good annual result was also due to an increase in premium volume compared to the previous year. At EUR 19.8 billion, this was 1.5 percent higher than in the previous year (EUR 19.5 billion) in the R+V Group. R+V thus returned to growth after a decline in the previous year.
Active reinsurance was particularly successful in the 2023 financial year, with premium growth of 5.6 per cent. It thus continued its profit-oriented growth course. R+V was also able to achieve significant growth in its international business in the past financial year. The Italian R+V subsidiary Assimoco achieved strong double-digit growth of 13.6 percent thanks to the further expansion of its sales partnership with the cooperative banking organisation in Italy.
Photo source: R+V
