Number One Partner

“A credible and trusted financial guide and partner is of key importance to any investor entering a new market or interested in developing operations thereon. Its roots and traditions, the PZU Group is second to none when it comes to experience or knowledge of the Polish market. We have the capacity to offer investment guarantees and capital expenditure funding, as well as full non-life coverage, life insurance for employees, in-house healthcare, and asset management. We provide multifaceted security, a thing of great value today, affording peace of mind in business plan pursuits, regardless of circumstances. We know how to do it, as best proven by our own excellent performance, continuous operational development, and top-notch ratings”, declares Beata Kozłowska-Chyła, Ph.D., CEO of the PZU.

Headed by the non-life insurance company PZU SA, the PZU Group is the largest financial conglomerate in Central and Eastern Europe. With market presence in Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Ukraine, its consolidated asset value exceeds PLN 430 billion. A leader on the insurance market, the Group has approximately 22 million corporate clients and private customers in Poland alone. It is also in the lead in banking services (Bank PeKaO and Alior Bank both controlled by the Group), the investment market, private healthcare, and voluntary retirement schemes. The Group insures corporate and family assets worth trillions of zlotys, as well as the life and health of millions of Poles. Importantly to foreign investors, PZU has been awarded an A- Outlook Stable rating by Standard and Poor’s, one of the highest in the Polish financial sector. According to Sustainalytics (another market leader), PZU’s risk exposure to ESG-related (environmental protection, social responsibility, corporate governance) negative financial outcomes is low.

Safe start, safe development

All PZU Group investors can count on funding secured by Group-owned banks or TFI PZU, an Investment Fund Society investing in, among others, renewable energy sources, and co-financing large wind farm construction projects. Investors are also offered comprehensive insurance policy protection against non-life and personal risks – the coverage spanning assets, third-party and environmental liability, cybercrime, costs of legal protection, and loss of profit – as well as employee life and health insurance, healthcare services included. And that’s not all.

“We do not sell products; we sell something much more important: comprehensive and technologically advanced client need solutions, for all operational stages. For new industrial plant construction, this translates into advisory and assistance services, from symbolic cornerstone ceremony to commissioning and further use. Our PZU LAB engineers provide support at facility design and supplier and contractor selection stages with top safety standards and manufacturing process continuity in mind, in order to minimise follow-up risks of grave damage, or high rebuilding or retrofit costs”, says Beata Kozłowska-Chyła.

Nearly 100 of the insurer’s large corporate clients have already joined the unique Ryzyko (Risk) PRO prevention programme. Working together with client firms, PZU experts diagnose potential risks and gaps in manufacturing, warehousing and logistics processes, cherry-picking suitable monitoring tools and using advanced sensors and Internet of Things technologies. The next phase involves an ongoing analysis of feedback data from 1,900 points (locations vulnerable to damage), and a follow-up proposal of security-enhancing solutions. The system has already proven reliable multiple times, having e.g. identified fires and/or hazardous substance leaks outside business hours and preventing major loss, potentially in excess of dozens million zlotys.

The PZU iFlota (iFleet) system is another example of the largest Polish insurer’s approach to prevention, and thus greater customisation of individual conditions and more accurate quote estimates. As many as 400 fleet managers are already using the system to actively manage fleets owned by PZU’s corporate clients. This online tool lets users monitor vehicle condition, fuel use, obligatory technical inspections, cost of repair, and shutdown times. Allowing policy management and claim reporting, it affords access to claims history, claim structure and cause analyses, personalised preventive measure recommendations, expert reports, and a knowledge and training database. PZU iFlota includes an EV module designed to support the drafting of comprehensive roadmaps to incorporate electric vehicles into individual car fleets, in recognition of their specificity and purpose. The module assesses the vehicle replacement potential and calculates the overall conversion cost, including charging infrastructure, etc.

Notably, Poland has landed an impressive third place (a runner-up to Canada and Singapore) worldwide in the aforementioned Kearney ranking, in the “most attractive technological investment location” category. Collaboration with the PZU Group, a market leader boasting a vast scale of operations, is a huge opportunity for insurtech or healthtech companies, among others. The insurer has developed an exemplary model of co-operating with startups, based on the Innovation Laboratory and PZU’s Ready For Startups programme. PZU analyses approximately 1,000 innovative ideas from all over the world each year, selecting the most promising business fits, some of which approved for implementation. Examples include PZU’s collaboration with Tractable, a UK-based AI company, which yielded the introduction in 2022 of an in-house AI Assistant and application allowing clients to send in photographs and descriptions of damage to vehicles; the system then analyses the extent and type of damage and the list and availability of spare parts required for vehicle repair, generating a tentative cost estimate. PZU has also worked together with a Swedish startup to implement AiHome, a household claim handling application which helps client account custodians appraise damage to e.g. household appliances and white goods, by offering daily updates to appliance supplier prices and seeking out substitute products for discontinued models and/or parts.

Staff Potential

Factors making Poland attractive to foreign investors include the considerable availability of talented and well-educated personnel. Regardless, “war for talent” is a phrase increasingly often heard on the Polish market as well.

“Wherever home office work format has become a regular solution, as it certainly has in the IT sector, for example, or wherever the state designs incentive systems to attract specific professionals, medical staff a case in point, every employer will end up competing for top quality personnel globally. Ageing societies, successive generations with completely new expectations entering the labour market, hybrid work formats having become a common solution – all that contributes to a dynamic environment wherein ideas for how to attract and, more importantly, keep the most talented staff are becoming an essential business strategy component. As one of the largest and most valued employers in Poland, we are absorbing the respective know-how with intent to help other companies establish win-win employee relations”, PZU’s CEO declares.

Socially responsible companies are required to do more than provide their staff with wages and adequate work tools: they have to care for the physical and mental wellbeing of employees, note their genuine needs and issues, and address them with the empathy they deserve. That is the correct roadmap to build employment attractiveness and competitive edge – and solid business performance as a result. This is why the PZU Group has been supporting firms by developing an ecosystem of non-salary employee benefits. PZU Benefity (Benefits) is one of the most modern platforms on the market today, one responding to contemporaneous needs duly verified by the recent pandemic. Owing to the platform and with employers as middle-men, millions of employees have access to PZU non-life insurance, PZU Życie (Life) group life insurance, PZU Zdrowie (Health) medical programmes (over 2,200 in-house and partner facilities), PZU Sport programmes (over 3,000 sports and leisure facilities), simple and convenient PZU CASH loans and credits, and affordable services and products offered by hundreds of PZU’s partner businesses. The platform supports HR departments, facilitating staff matters handling, educational and training activities, and volunteer work logistics, among others.

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