BNP Paribas Cardif in Japan: Leading the insurance industry with customer care

Edgerton and Kennelly work tirelessly to ensure that a focus on the customer is the business’s top priority, and this has helped BNP Paribas Cardif grow faster than the market for 14 years.

“We’re not a normal insurance business – we work with partners on bank insurance which distribute our products,” says Edgerton. “Facing strong competition, we realised that the best way we could compete was with customer experience. That started our transformation.”

Kennelly adds: “We also need to challenge ourselves naturally in terms of whether what we’re doing is adding real value from the customer’s perspective.”

Edgerton and Kennelly aim to make insurance more flexible, more agile, and ultimately offer the best bespoke solutions available. They do this by listening to customers, encouraging open communication, and implementing best-in-class technology to allow all of this.

“In Japan, the word for ‘customer’ and ‘guest’ are the same,” Edgerton continues. “The assumption is that you know your customer so well that you’re able to fulfil their needs without them asking. There is no difference between you and your customer.”

“What’s very important in Japan is trust, respect, sincerity, and commitment. Delivery of superior product is the result, but it’s about the journey for us,” Kennelly concludes.

To discover the full story, click here to read Business Review Asia magazine or Gigabit and click here here for the BNP Paribas Cradif report.