Ms. Adjaratou Ndaw SY Reflects on SUNU Assurances Vie Senegal’s Journey and Future Plans in Exclusive Interview

Ms. Adjaratou Ndaw SY has been Managing Director of SUNU Assurances Vie Senegal for 17 years. In this interview granted to the Journal de l’économie sénégalaise (Lejecos), Ms. Sy looks back on the genesis of the Group with its founder, the late Pathé Dione. She told the magazine that the SUNU Group will soon launch 100% digital products in life and non-life insurance but also that SUNU Assurances Vie Senegal paid 6.6 billion FCFA in benefits to its policyholders in 2022.
Humble, rigorous, available, with a very convincing statement, Ms. SY is one of those rare female leaders of an insurance company in Senegal.

Barely out of high school with her scientific baccalaureate, the young lady had the objective of continuing her studies in France. She then joined the preparatory classes for the entrance exams to the Grandes Ecoles and obtained her Bachelor’s degree and then her Master’s degree in Mathematics applied to fundamental sciences at the University of Paris Jussieu before passing her DEA (Diplômes d’Etudes Approfondies) exam at statistics and random models in economics and mathematical finance and, finally, a Master’s degree in economic and statistical modeling, option Actuarial Finance at ENSAE-Paris.
Seasoned with her rich university career, she quickly joined large companies in France, notably Crédit Commercial de France, then Axa and finally the Athena Assurances group. Her attachment to her native Senegal and her wish to contribute to the development of her country led her to return home to hold senior positions there in 2000, at Csar-Vie, which became UASen Vie, then SUNU Assurances Vie Senegal, which she has managed since then. 2009.
Interview.

Madam Director General, the SUNU Group is currently present in more than 17 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, for a total of 26 insurance companies, 2 banks, 1 microfinance, 2 health managers and so on. Can we speak of a SUNU model at the pan-African level?

In view of the course and history of the SUNU Group, we can be proud and admiring of the progress made and our achievements. As a reminder, the Group was born in 1998 from the will of our late President Pathé Dione who, at the age of 57, wanted to set up an insurance group for Africans and by Africans with the support of a few employees.

At the time, the Axa group had taken over the former subsidiaries of the UAP group in Africa. The late Pathé Dione was the Group’s Africa Director. And Axa wanted to sell five subsidiaries, including UASen Vie. It was then that Mr. Pathé Dione decided to create the SUNU Group from these 5 companies in Senegal, Niger, Benin, the Central African Republic and Togo.

With insurance as its core business, and the constant concern for compliance with commitments, the SUNU Group has thus been able to make its ascent within the African continent with a presence in 17 countries and 26 insurance companies in 25 years of operation. existence. In 2022, the Group was able to achieve a turnover of 256 billion FCFA and managed more than 618 billion FCFA in assets.
It should also be noted that 5 years ago, the Group began to expand its scope by acquiring its first bank in Togo SUNU Bank (formerly BPEC) and this year 2023, its second bank BICIS in Senegal.

Today, the Group’s vision is to be a leader in insurance and financial services that successfully supports women and men on the African continent.

With all these achievements, I think we can speak of a pan-African model of success for the SUNU Group. Our only and greatest regret is to have lost during this great entrepreneurial adventure, our founding president Mr. Pathé Dione. But we remain convinced that his spirit of openness, his generosity in sharing knowledge and his rigor will remain values ​​engraved in all the women and men of the SUNU Group in order to perpetuate his work.

For SUNU Assurances Vie Senegal, can you come back to the consolidated figures in terms of activity and performance indicators?

SUNU Assurances Vie Senegal closed the year 2022 with a turnover of 10.3 billion FCFA,

We achieved the second best performance in the distribution of individual products via the network of sales agents that we have developed and retained over the past few years.
We paid 6.6 billion CFA francs in benefits to our policyholders during the same year.
Our solvency indicators are green, with solvency margin coverage at 308% and that of our regulated commitments at 110%.

SUNU’s vision is to be a leader in Insurance and Financial Services, to protect and secure populations. Can we say that this vision has now become a reality at SUNU Assurances Vie Senegal?

Within the SUNU Group and therefore in all our subsidiaries, we put the customer at the center of everything, and respect our commitments. We are moving with fervor towards this leadership position. We adapt our service offerings to the needs and realities of our customers, who are at the center of all our activity. And thanks to our Micro-insurance approval, we can reach a wider section of the population with targeted offers for the most vulnerable, such as the Death and Hospitalization product which reimburses costs in the event of hospitalization. We have also marketed the fully digital Futuris product, which allows you to build up retirement capital and benefit from coverage for your loved ones in the event of death, with flexibility in the frequency of premium payments.
Finally, we offered this clientele the Education annuity product to protect children at a lower cost.

Your company has resolutely invested in the digitization of its processes and its solutions (products and services) with its customer relations. What are the different innovations and initiatives brought by SUNU Assurances Vie Senegal in this direction?

We started our digitization process a few years ago, in fact, by equipping our sales agents in the field with tablets to facilitate access to our product offers. Thus, certain information is communicated to the customer in real time.

We also provide individuals with an online platform to monitor their contracts, without having to travel. Our banking partners also have a digital platform integrating the subscription and even the transmission of service requests. This is what allows us, on the one hand, to have reduced processing times and, on the other hand, a secure and transparent management method for our customers and our partners.
We are still working to put 100% digital products on the market very soon, from subscription to service management.

Do you think that this strategy of advanced digitization of insurance products will allow SUNU Assurances Vie Senegal to act on the market penetration rate? Are there any identified constraints or challenges to overcome?

Digitization should allow insurance companies to have more transparency with their policyholders, and thus gain more trust.

The major constraint of life insurance in Senegal is that it cannot be bought, it is sold. Therefore, it will necessarily be necessary to raise awareness among the targets and develop a certain proximity with them. I am convinced that digitization can help erase the bad image attached to insurance.

We have already had the experience of marketing a fully digitized microinsurance product, from underwriting to compensation. This product was marketed via a mobile operator and allowed the insured to receive a daily allowance in the event of hospitalization and a lump sum for his relatives in the event of death. Premiums could be taken per day, week or month. This was a real innovation, because we were able to ensure more than 20,000 subscriptions in 4 years and contribute to the improvement of their living conditions. The challenge of digitization is the implementation of functional interoperable platforms.

Madam Director General, a last word on the projects and prospects of SUNU Assurances Vie Senegal?

We remain on our dynamic of developing services and tools adapted to the market. We are going to launch our 100% digital products in life and non-life insurance and we hope that with the recent acquisition of BICIS, we will be able to offer adapted, competitive banking & insurance products and services, while keeping the customer at the center of everything.

Lejecos Magazine