Innovation Ambassadors: offering credit protection for elderly customers in Brazil

The Innovation Ambassadors program, counting 84 innovative projects submitted from 24 countries worldwide in 2024, shows that innovation can be found everywhere at BNP Paribas Cardif! 
Learn more about how BNP Paribas Cardif in Brazil has cracked into a new CPI market, offering affordable credit protection for elderly customers who want to carry out their projects, and ultimately making insurance more accessible.

Introduce yourself briefly: country, division, main tasks, personal interests outside the company (e.g., leisure and hobbies)

I’m Luciano Benicio, Commercial Director for Banks at BNP Paribas Cardif in Brazil. My responsibility is to win new partnerships in this sector and develop existing ones, like BRB (Regional Bank of Brasilia) and digital banks such Neon and PagBank. 

Outside of BNP Paribas Cardif I practice running and like all Brazilians, I´m passionate about football, and follow Flamengo, the biggest and most famous team in Brazil.. I also like to read and study topics related to economics, demographics and behavioral finance. Finally, I really like to watch movies and go to the beach with my family.

Tell us about your project: its main focus, what is is about, how it came about, and what it will bring to BNP Paribas Cardif. 

Well, the initiative is basically the increase of the age limit for CPI from 70 years old to 80 years old in BRB (Regional Bank of Brasilia).  Iin Brazil it´s really new and innovative.
Since the beginning of the operation in 2023, we have been discussing opportunities beyond what was already planned in the Business Plan. One of the opportunities identified was when they showed us a relevant part of their credits were given to the clients 70+, which were not protected by the previous insurer. 

We very quickly evaluated the opportunity, including using fresh information from our new demographic census (2022), where the aging nature of our population is made perfectly clear.
Besides, we negotiated with BRB that we would just approve the product with less commission, considering the inevitable raise of client value. So, for this product, we reduced commission at the same rate we were expecting the client value increase.

We had a lot of benefits: GWP increase; on top of what was planned on the BP. Moreover, the product is a perfect example of our culture, based on making insurance more accessible and with higher Client Value. Finally, we´ve just started to spread this initiative to other partners. 

What did you find most striking/surprising during this project (perhaps you have an anecdote to tell us)?

I would like to underline the importance of diving into the partner’s business—this case was a great example. BNP Paribas Cardif is in São Paulo, but BRB’s headquarters is in our capital Brasília (1000 km away). In 2023, I actually spent more days inside the BRB office than in São Paulo!

I’m always visiting branches and talking to managers, holding meetings with teams from different areas and looking for opportunities to improve and grow the business. In one of these meetings with the lending team, they made a comment about the volume of loans for people 70+ and that they were made without CPI. 

They brought up this point with little hope that Cardif would take up the challenge of protecting these operations. However, I brought the opportunity to Cardif and in less than 90 days the product was implemented. 

The bank was impressed with Cardif’s agility, and this is a clear case that shows how proximity and investigation always generates new opportunities.

What advice would you give to employees who also want to innovate? 

Innovation requires courage, resilience, a good communication strategy and strong arguments to convince others. That’s why we must be even deeper in the analysis of facts and data to build an innovative solution. 

That´s why I really like to ask questions to data. With well-structured questions, data takes great pleasure in bringing us good answers. After all, it is questions that move the world and transform it continuously.

Finally, this answer reminds me of two of my favorite books that exemplify the way I think about Innovation that could inspire our community: Originals – How Non-Conformists Move the Rooms (Adam Grant) and Fact Fullness – Ten Reason We´re Wrong About the World (Hans Rosling)