Insurance companies face a challenge in trying to address Mexico’s low penetration rate.

Insurance companies face an intriguing challenge in trying to address Mexico’s low insurance penetration rate.

What role does Mexico play within SURA Asset Management’s international business strategy in Latin America?

Grupo SURA has three main divisions: asset management, insurance, and banking. Mexico plays an extremely important role in terms of results, revenues, sales and number of clients. It represents around 35% of the region’s total revenues for this business line and contributes approximately 8 million clients. In our growth strategy, Mexico represents a huge opportunity; not only is it the largest country where SURA AM is present, but its predominantly young population and room for growth of our market share (currently 15%) also make it an attractive market. We definitely have space to grow in Mexico. The pension system in Mexico was designed in the late 1990s, so we are slightly behind in the process of accumulating assets. Therefore, we are growing assets at a faster pace than in other countries.

SURA Asset Management is ranked fourth in pension funds in Mexico, but first in Latin America. What strategies is the group using to become number one in Mexico?

Afore SURA stands out from its competitors for its strong and solid investment professionals with a well-established investment process and longterm perspective. Afore SURA is the only pension fund to obtain a Morningstar Silver Analyst ranking for two consecutive years, the highest Morningstar ranking assigned during that period. Most of our competitors are part of major banks, insurance companies, and other financial institutions; there are few players with a core business in pension management, and Afore SURA is one of them.

In what ways is SURA Asset Management Mexico trying to be one step ahead of others in terms of digitalization?

One of our top priorities is to be ahead in developing the best digital solutions that enable us to be nearer our clients to solve their needs in a more agile and convenient ways for them. We have significantly improved our clients’ experience by reducing the time clients had to spend using our services by 50%.

What strategies are you using to improve consumers’ financial education in Mexico?

Our main value offering is providing advice to our customers and supporting them in their financial decisions. We want to educate our clients on the importance of saving for their retirement, and there are many things they can do to improve their retirement funds. The level of informality is high in Mexico’s labor market, and employees actively contribute to their pension system less than 40% of the time during their entire careers. This is an extremely important issue, because the result is an important gap in their replacement rate. In SURA Asset Management, we are aware of this situation and have significant efforts to extend our voluntary savings vehicles through digital platforms. Our growth rate for voluntary savings for the last five years has been around 42%, more than double the market average. We are highly committed to promoting such services to our client base to help them reach the retirement they desire.

SURA Asset Management Mexico has two business lines in Mexico: pensions and wealth management. In pensions, we will continue to improve our services and invest heavily in selling digitally and in financial education. We are fully committed with our clients to deliver the best returns possible in the market. In our wealth management business, we are still a small player in Mexico for individuals’ wealth management but have great expectations to grow aggressively in this business. Our institutional investment management business is an important player in managing private pension funds and insurance companies reserves. We want to grow heavily in the personal wealth management segment, so we are developing a whole new business line. We are improving our product offering in terms of the quantity of products, open architecture, and more sophisticated products for the Mexican market. ✖