The council of Catalana Occidente yesterday approved the unification of all the brands of the traditional insurance business into a single one, which will be Occident, within the framework of a corporate restructuring that foresees the merger of the companies that operate in the traditional insurance business (Seguros Catalana Occidente, Plus Ultra Seguros, Seguros Bilbao and, in a second phase, NorteHispana Seguros).
The company has explained today that this union responds to the objective of simplifying its corporate structure and gaining efficiency, which has also included a plan to cut 550 jobs with voluntary redundancies over a period of two years. The group has already integrated the operating and service platforms of its investees and has standardized its products.
The corporate integration is expected to be carried out at the end of this year, when the firm receives authorization from the regulators, except for its funeral subsidiary, Nortehispana, which will be integrated "later". Its credit insurance subsidiary, Atradius, will operate as before independently. In a first period, the company pointed out, the new brand will coexist with the traditional brands, which in Catalonia and the Basque Country have great local roots.
The CEO of Grupo Catalana Occidente, Hugo Serra, said in a statement that "joining forces under the umbrella of a new solid brand will allow us to compete more effectively." With the choice of Occident as a brand, the group wants it to "transmit the values of trust, closeness and professionalism that we have provided to our clients up to now".
The Catalana Occidente group is present in more than 50 countries, from where it provides service to more than 4.5 million policyholders, with a commercial network of nearly 1,500 offices and 17,000 brokers. At the end of 2022, it was fourth in the Spanish insurance market and second worldwide in credit insurance.
The Catalana Occidente group had revenues of 2,878 million euros in the first half of 2022, an increase of 9% more than in 2021. The attributable result reached 262.2 million, 19.5% more than in the same period period of the previous year.
The group, which through NorteHispana has made death insurance one of the axes of its growth, last year bought the Mémora funeral group from the Ontario Teacher's Pension Plan Board fund and the management team for 387.5 million euros. This has made it the leading group in the funeral sector in Spain, and has given it entry into the Portuguese market.
