Over the coming months, Aegon has decided to wind down its Dutch onna-onna brand, a start-up insurance enterprise offering car, bicycle and home insurance.
Founded in 2008, onna-onna provides benefits that are particularly attractive to female customers. Since 2014, Aegon has had full ownership of the company.
Through launching onna-onna, Aegon aimed to speed up innovation and develop its expertise in targeting specific consumer groups, as well as providing outstanding customer service. In this respect, the experiment succeeded. Unfortunately, current insurance sector economics and the opportunities for improving onna-onna's business model are behind expectations.
Fostering innovation
Aegon has been bringing innovation to the insurance sector through a number of joint ventures, including Digido, Newest Industry and ROMEO. In doing so, profitability and growth prospects are considered carefully against a background of cost savings and the company's strategic priorities. As a result of this careful scrutiny, onna-onna was judged from a financial perspective to be insufficiently cost-effective or sustainable as an independently operating brand.
Applying lessons to our core business
More than 25,000 existing customers with onna-onna car insurance will continue to benefit from the unique benefits offered by their policy. Since August 2016, the payment process, acceptance and claims handling for new customers has been handled by Aegon's back office. Starting in November this year, services for all onna-onna car insurance customers will seamlessly transition to Aegon Customer Services.
We are currently investigating the options available for onna-onna customers with home or bicycle insurance. onna-onna's Amsterdam office will close in November.
"Aegon The Netherlands is involved in between ten and fifteen innovative enterprises at any one time. But innovation also needs an exit strategy, however painful, if the growth perspective is insufficiently sustainable. The knowledge and experience we've acquired on reaching specific target groups and on customer service is extremely valuable. We will continue to apply these lessons to the Aegon brand."
