Innovation Insider with Ingrid Bocris

Societe Generale is present in 62 countries, driving innovation for our customers by unleashing the collective intelligence of our 138,000 colleagues is an adventure every day! Time to meet our innovators leading the transformation of our businesses and creating new business models. 

Ingrid is one of the likes of a penny in your pocket capable to have big dreams. She always has the right question to ask. As deputy General Manager of Sogecap, she oversees Innovation, Data, and Partnership. She is also the executive chairman of Moonshot-Internet a start-up providing insurance-as-a -service. She always used funny French metaphor to embody the need for change and transformation. Ingrid is one of the true Women Role Models of SG, the one you want to follow in the footsteps as you’re sure it will get you somewhere.

Ingrid, could you please tell us about the changes of Societe Generale Assurances under your leadership?

The first change involves accelerating business development with our partners outside of Societe Generale, both in France and abroad, in the areas of life insurance and savings as well as protection. For example, Oradéa Vie – our company dedicated to partnerships in life insurance and savings – achieved inflows of €1 billion in 2019. In property and casualty (P&C) insurance, we won one of the largest invitations to tender in the vehicle fleet industry in France. Launched by the UGAP (the French Union of Public Purchasing Groups), this invitation to tender was to insure more than 40,000 state-owned fleet vehicles (company cars, service vehicles, etc.) over a period of four years.  Another example is Rakuten – one of the top e-commerce companies in France – which decided to entrust their business to Moonshot-Internet.

Second, the deployment of our API (Application Programming Interface) strategy across all our business activities represents yet another transformation. APIs are a means of distinguishing ourselves in our partnerships with the development of reusable modules in a multi-distribution model which fast tracks our time to market. These modules enable our partners to personalise our services by choosing the most useful ‘building blocks’ to grow their business (such as customer experience, pricing and policy management).

Third, we have also made a great deal of progress in data exploitation. We honed our expertise in this field to promote cross-selling and upselling with our distributors so as to offer our clients the right products and services at the right time. In less than a year, we launched a data-science platform which makes industrialisation possible and gives us a major advantage over our competitors. At the same time, we work hard to disseminate a data culture.

Last, the most recent major change involves working methods at ASSU. To achieve this change, we intend to rely on i-link, an innovation-based community we created in 2018 with over 100 volunteer employees representing all our business lines in France and abroad. 

The goal of i-link community is to get all employees involved in driving innovation. To give you an idea, here are a few figures: 66% of i-linkers participated in one of the 25 tests for new offerings and concepts suggested in 2019 and their efforts led to specific formal offerings for energy companies with whom we have partnerships in France and Germany.

And what about Moonshot-Internet? What are the main challenges to grow a start-up from an incumbent? Do you plan to create more start-ups?

Moonshot-Internet – our insurtech start-up – features an innovative and modern insurance offering adapted to new usages, with a client experience that’s entirely digital, from taking out a policy to submitting a claim. This offering is distributed via the digital platforms of e-commerce companies, online travel agencies, mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) companies and financial service companies. With the launch of new products and large-scale partnerships with companies like Rakuten, Moonshot-Internet has earned itself over 280,000 clients since it was founded in 2017. 

In February 2020, we invested nearly €1.1 million in the start-up Mutumutu. Established in 2018, Mutumutu combines life insurance with a programme that rewards clients for healthy living. This cash-back programme reimburses the policyholder for part of their premiums by sharing proof of their healthy lifestyle via a mobile health app.

In 2019, in line with the Group's Internal Start-up Call, we launched Rocket—an internal call for projects focused on insurance to protect individuals and property. The winner, Hinlife – a solution for disabled persons and those closest to them – is currently under development and should be launched this autumn. I’m not yet sure if an internal start-up will come of it, but this experience enabled many employees to discover the world of intrapreneurship and start-ups, and to educate themselves through workshops created for the occasion.

What’s your commitment to build a more sustainable future in Insurance?

The health crisis we’ve gone through drastically changed the needs and behaviours of our clients in three areas: Greater concern for protection and health; Greater need for security particularly regarding long-term savings plans, with more trust placed in insurers able to proactively create bespoke solutions; Greater sensitivity to the “perceived” value of offerings and the balance between the protection the insurer provides and the value the client receives. In terms of behaviour, the crisis digitalised the consumption of financial services to the point of no return.

To reflect these changes, my commitment is to continue developing the most diverse and comprehensive selection possible of offerings and services to meet user-friendly digital requirements; to dream up new insurance solutions that are on-demand and in-use. We have already begun to do this through Moonshot-Internet and by being a pioneer smart-car data in France and Italy; to continue to bring meaning to our clients and employees as a responsible insurance business in every respect (responsible investment and offerings as a responsible employer).

 Where do you see Insurance in 5 years?

I foresee three main areas of change over the next five years:

Insurance has and will have a more major role to play than ever in growing savings. Our €97 billion in assets under management make our insurance business a top investor in the real economy through real estate, urban and infrastructure development in France and throughout Europe (in 2019, €740 million in new investments was allocated to this theme) and investment funds which support innovation (Sogessur is committed to developing a financing ecosystem in France for innovative tech companies as part of the E5bn support).

As an insurer, our purpose is to protect our policyholders and their assets in the long run. That is why we develop solutions for our clients which combine security and access to investments in the real economy (such as PrimoPacte, the first institutional private-equity unit-linked insurance launched last year, as well as all our infrastructure investment initiatives). That is also why we have to position ourselves proactively in order to provide support and advisory for our clients’ major plans—especially retirement planning.

As an insurer, we represent protection from every angle. This includes health, of course, but also extends to protection for mobility and its new usages. We are equally capable of playing a critical role in the home along with all those who contribute to the ecosystem of home life. I believe that insurers have a legitimate place in the home and that the future will involve creating platforms featuring bundles of services from various partners, each able to meet a portion of clients’ needs.

Finally, as a responsible employer, our job is to provide daily support to our 2,900 employees to prepare them better for the changes to come in our business lines. We believe our employees are the heart of our transformation and it is up to us to make their assignments meaningful. In my opinion, this ability to make work meaningful will be crucial in order to distinguish ourselves over the next few years.

Insurance is a cornerstone of the economy and of the daily lives of our individual, professional and corporate clients. Furthermore, the crisis has highlighted the impact of this role. The insurance industry has to fulfil its role as a protector in a transparent way while showing clients the real benefits and value of our offerings and services.

3 key words to describe yourself?

Optimistic, determined, and a lover of team training!

Thank you Ingrid!