Brief overview

For more than 200 years, PZU has been growing its business, gaining experience and using its potential to protect what is most valuable – the life and well-being of its clients, their families, assets and companies. Every day, the Group develops to grow be able to provide the most personalized, comprehensive and flexible offer to its clients. The priority for the PZU Group and the measure of its success is to generate benefits for its shareholders and clients in a sustainable and responsible manner

Potential

The Powszechny Zakład Ubezpieczeń Group is the largest financial group in Poland and Central and Eastern Europe. PZU heads up the group with its traditions dating back to 1803 when the first insurance company was established on Polish soil. PZU is a public company. PZU’s stock has been listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE) since 2010. Since its stock exchange debut PZU has been part of WIG20, an index of the Warsaw Stock Exchange’s largest companies. It is one of the most highly valued companies and heavily traded stocks on the Polish stock exchange. Since 2019, PZU’s shares have been also part of the WIG ESG (sustainability) index.

The State Treasury with a 34.19% equity stake is PZU’s main shareholder.

The PZU Group’s consolidated assets total PLN 402 billion. The Group enjoys the trust of 22 million clients in five countries. It offers products and services to retail clients, small and medium enterprises and big business entities. Poland is the PZU Group’s core market measured by its magnitude and client numbers. Nevertheless, the Group’s subsidiaries play an important role on the markets in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Ukraine. The Group companies offer not only in life, non-life and health insurance but also in banking, investment, pension and health care products. They also render assistance services to retail clients and businesses through strategic partnerships. The Group’s operations are founded on clients’ trust. The Group places the client in the center of attention and integrates all areas of activity around the client. This allows it to offer increasingly personalized, flexible and comprehensive products and services matching the needs of increasingly demanding clients at every stage of their private and professional lives and at the suitable place and time.

The Group’s strategic ambition is to develop ecosystems, which will provide comprehensive solutions to institutional as well as individual clients. They will create new opportunities to build long-lasting relations with clients in daily life. The key elements that contribute to building an entrenched technological advantage in integrated client service include further digitization, use of artificial intelligence (AI), big data and advanced analytics, as well as mobile and omni-channel solutions. The technological transition will be supported by the use of cloud computing.

Among all insurers operating in Poland PZU offers its clients the largest sales and service network. It has 409 branches, 9.7 thousand tied agents and agencies, 3.2 thousand multiagencies, over 1 thousand insurance brokers and electronic distribution channels. When it comes to bancassurance and strategic partnerships, the PZU Group collaborates with 12 banks and 20 strategic partners.

In addition, the PZU Group’s clients in Poland have access to Bank Pekao’s distribution network (650 branches) and Alior Bank’s distribution network (600 branches, including 173 traditional branches, 7 Private Banking branches, 13 Corporate Banking Centers and 407 partner centers). Both banks have professional call centers and mobile and Internet banking platforms.

In the Baltic States where the PZU Group is in the insurance business, its distribution network consists of 660 agents, 20 multiagencies and 455 brokers. PZU also cooperates with 6 banks and 13 strategic partners. In Ukraine insurance products are distributed through nearly 400 agents and in cooperation with 26 multiagencies, 35 brokers and 10 banks.

Brand

PZU is the most recognizable brand in Poland. It is spontaneously mentioned by 82% of Poles. Aided brand awareness is at the level of 99%¹. Even though it is associated mainly with insurance, the PZU Group umbrella contains several brands. They differ in terms of the visual systems used, target groups and business models.

The main brand used is the PZU corporate brand. This brand is used to identify the PZU Group itself, most of its companies operating on the Polish market (PZU, PZU Życie, PTE PZU, TFI PZU, PZU Pomoc, PZU Zdrowie, PZU Centrum Operacji), aS well as some of the international companies – the Ukrainian companies, Lithuanian branch in Estonia and the Lithuanian company PZU Lietuva Gyvybes Draudimas (PZU Life Lithuania).

In the PZU Group’s architecture, there is also a group of PZU family brands. This family is formed by companies whose names do not reference the parent company brand, such as AAS Balta and TUW PZUW. However, their logos look similar to the corporate brand. These companies also use similar visual identification systems.

The last level of brand architecture is the independent brands group. This category includes the brands within the PZU Group, the names and visualization of which differ from the corporate brand, such as Lietuvos Draudimas and LINK4. Aided awareness of the LINK4 brand in the Polish market is 95%². In 2021, the brand of Lietuvos Draudimas had equally high prompted awareness – 95% in the Lithuanian market.

The independent brands that joined the PZU Group in 2015 and 2017 are Alior and Pekao bank brands, respectively. Both are the leading banks with regard to brand awareness in the category of banks according to the study by Kantar Millward Brown.

In 2020, in addition the Cash brand joined the PZU Group’s architecture. It denotes a company under the name PZU Cash managing the website offering financial employee benefits.

PZU Group brand architecture (the “corporate umbrella” model)

Mission

In March 2021, the PZU Group published its Strategy for 2021-2024 under the motto of #PZU Potential and Growth. According to the mission, “We care about the most important things in life”, PZU has the ambition to accompany its clients in successive stages of their lives, helping them make their key decisions. The underlying idea is to supply high quality insurance, financial and health products in the most efficient way in terms of price, distribution, adequacy and competitiveness.

Modern product and service ecosystems

One of the tools supporting PZU’s mission is building modern and comprehensive product ecosystems. First, those will be offers directed to businesses (benefits) and drivers. Through the benefits ecosystem, employers will obtain a comprehensive offering consisting of various types of benefits unrelated to salary for their employees. Among other things, they will obtain access to services such as the PZU Sport sports and leisure subscription, or the CASH portal offering loans on attractive terms, in which repayments are deducted directly from salaries. These benefits improve the living comfort of the employees, motivate them to be physically active and change their lifestyles. They allow PZU to build relations with clients that are based on daily life choices. The product ecosystem for drivers includes, among others, assistance in the purchase and sale of a car, support in financing the purchase, verification of the vehicle’s technical condition, or assistance in choosing a repair shop. PZU specialists will offer expert knowledge for clients to be able to make the best choices, even if they lack experience in maintaining a vehicle. The ecosystem will be the only solution of this type offered on the Polish market by an insurer.

PZU Group’s product offer

Personalization of services

The PZU Group has a corporate Data Warehouse that is one of the largest in the Central and Eastern Europe. Its application, combined with an integrated approach to clients and cooperation between various distribution channels, allows the Group to create personalized product offerings. In addition to the standard insurance, health, banking or investment products, PZU also offers modern support and advisory services, helping clients manage their risks better. These activities also increase the number of client interactions. It is the client and information about the client that are at the core of the Group’s operating model. In its strategy, the Group assumes that further development of modern tools for all sales channels, implementation of advanced analytical environments and consolidation of analytical processes with banks will produce data that will best reflect client preferences and behaviors. This will ensure that the potential of the portfolio and knowledge about clients are fully utilized.

Health and wellbeing

The PZU Group places great emphasis on the health and wellbeing of employees and clients. Its goal is to build health awareness in Poland, with special emphasis on prevention measures. It is the prevention of illnesses, not treatment, that is the priority for PZU. By developing the PZU Zdrowie offer and network, it wants to revolutionize the approach to health care in Poland and become the most comprehensive medical advisor. By using modern technologies, telemedicine and by developing the mojePZU application, it wants to provide easier access to specialist medical services and qualified physicians, helping Polish people to protect their health, which one of the greatest values in life.

Value creation

Sustainable future

The PZU Group operates on a large scale in Poland and in the Central and Eastern Europe and it is aware of its impact on the wellbeing of the society, business partners, investors, employees and the environment.

The PZU Group is committed to the development of a responsible organization, strongly emphasizing the ESG (environment, social and governance) factors in its strategy. The priority for the PZU Group is to generate benefits for its shareholders and clients in a sustainable and responsible manner. The success of the PZU Group will be built based on contemporary business models widely incorporating ESG criteria, setting standards in this respect on the financial market. This approach will permit the making of decisions supporting sustainable development in the context of the products being offered, cooperation with business partners, care for the well-being of employees and local communities, and building value-based leadership.

The Group supports the development of low-carbon economy, is committed to just energy transition and encourages communities to adopt sustainable and safe lifestyles and builds a modern, responsibly-managed organization. Through these and many other initiatives, the PZU Group pursues the ambition of becoming a trusted partner for green transition, the best place to work on the markets where it conducts business and improve the quality of life for the entire society.

Value creation model

The PZU Group’s value creation model refers to the international “IIRC” guidelines of the International Integrated Reporting Council. They define the approach to reporting, combining material information pertaining to an organization’s strategy, approach to management, performance and future prospects in a way that reflects the financial, social and environmental context of an organization’s operations. All these aspects should refer to value creation over time with the use of available capital, i.e. the resources that the organization can access and use to create value.

The overriding element in the PZU Group’s value creation model is its corporate governance (C), which defines governance and supervision standards for the conducted business activity and strategic measures undertaken. The key processes are identified within the existing organizational structures that are critical for the performance achieved from capital (B), for individual business areas (A). The most important processes include risk management and development strategy. These two aspects determine the value of the company in the future as well as its impact on its surroundings and stakeholder relations.

Business activity, with insurance as the key element, is at the core of PZU Group’s value creation model. The offer is supplemented by health, banking as well as investment and pension products.

Structure of value creation model

Impact on the surroundings

PZU Group exerts significant influence, among others, on the Polish economy, society and environment. First of all, it is one of the largest employers in Poland, with several dozen thousand employees, makes significant contributions to the state budget from the taxes it pays, invests its significant assets in stocks, providing the funding needed for their development, and bonds, helping finance infrastructural projects that are important for the country, improvement of education or medical care.

Through its assets, the Group is a prominent player on the financial market in Poland, exerting significant influence on its status and development directions. The claims and benefits paid by the Group help businesses maintain continuity of business in unexpected situations and avoid serious financial problems. By insuring millions of Poles, PZU has real influence on their lives. First of all, the claims and benefits paid out help families to maintain financial stability in difficult situations, such as illness or death of a family member, loss of home due to fire, flood or other disasters. This offers additional protection, which provides the sense of stability and safety. Through its activities, PZU also affects the natural environment. Because of its size and market position, the Group is able to set new trends. For example, by selecting environmentally-friendly investments and sustainable suppliers, it emphasizes the importance of environmental protection and the fight with the climate change. This way it impacts its business partners, which must adopt a similar attitude in order to continue cooperation. By creating new products, such as insurance for wind farms, photovoltaic installations, eco loans, the PZU Group takes an active part in energy transition, thus supporting its clients in making climate-positive decisionst.

Key business areas of the PZU Group

Insurance – for many years the PZU Group has provided insurance cover in all of the most important areas of private, public and business life, thereby safeguarding its clients’ lives, assets and health. PZU (non-life insurance, including motor, residential and buildings, agricultural and third party liability insurance) and PZU Życie (life insurance) are the leaders on Poland’s insurance market. Since 2014, after the acquisition of LINK4, the Group has been offering insurance under two brands: the most recognizable PZU brand, with its 200-year tradition, and the much younger LINK4 brand, associated with direct sales channels. In 2015 the third brand, TUW PZUW, or Towarzystwo Ubezpieczeń Wzajemnych Polski Zakład Ubezpieczeń Wzajemnych, a mutual insurer, was founded to sell and handle insurance products for companies in various industries, focusing on cooperation with large corporates, medical entities (hospitals and clinics) as well as for church institutions and local government units.

The PZU Group is also the leader in the insurance market of the Baltic States (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia). It also conducts insurance activities in Ukraine.

Poland is the Group’s core market, where it generates 91.2% of its revenue (measured by gross written premium). The insurance activity in the Baltic States and in Ukraine generates 8.8% of its revenue.

Investments – The PZU Group is one of the largest asset managers on the Polish market. It is also the market leader in employee pension schemes.

The PZU Investments brand offers an extensive range of investment products: open and closed-end mutual funds and pension products, open-end pension funds, individual retirement accounts (IRA), individual retirement security accounts with a voluntary pension fund, employee pension schemes (EPS) and employee capital schemes (ECS). PZU TFI also invests the PZU Group’s own funds.

The PZU Group has three mutual fund management companies: PZU TFI, Pekao TFI and Alior TFI. It also has Powszechne Towarzystwo Emerytalne PZU managing the PZU Złota Jesień Open-end Pension Fund.

Health – in its efforts to ensure greater and more complete satisfaction of its client needs, the PZU Group has been actively developing the health insurance market with accompanying health care services under the PZU Zdrowie brand. The health business deals with the following activities:

• sales of health products in the form of insurance and sales of non-insurance products (occupational medicine, medical subscriptions, partnerships and prevention programs), 
• construction and development of medical infrastructure in Poland to give clients the best accessibility to the health care services rendered.

The PZU Zdrowie network has 130 own and over 2,200 partner centers. Its advantages include quick appointments, respecting referrals for tests from physicians from outside the PZU Zdrowie network, remote medical consultations which make it possible, in addition to obtaining medical advice or discussing test results, to receive a prescription or referral to tests. The offer is supplemented by prevention services. 

Banking – The PZU Group’s banking business consists of two groups: Bank Pekao (a member since 2017) and Alior Bank (a member since 2015).

Bank Pekao, established in 1929, is a universal commercial bank offering a full range of banking services provided to individual and institutional clients.

Alior Bank is a universal deposit and credit bank. It was established in 2008 as a start-up. It combines the principles of traditional banking with innovative solutions and consequently it sets new trends in financial services and consistently strengthens its market position.

Tightening cooperation with banks has opened up enormous growth opportunities for the PZU Group, especially in terms of integrating and focusing its services on clients at every stage of their personal and professional development. Cooperation with the banking segment forms an additional plane for PZU to build lasting client relations.

The PZU Group’s operations in the banking segment are conducted in the following areas: bancassurance, assurbanking and operational synergies..

Milestones in PZU Group’s history

The PZU Group has been developing on the financial market for more than 200 years.

Awards and distinctions