Japan-headquartered Tokio Marine Holdings will form a home insurance joint venture in Brazil with Caixa Seguridade, the insurance arm of Caixa, one of Brazil’s largest banks.
According to a report by the Japanese P&C insurance giant is investing ¥39.5 billion (US$370 million) in the joint venture, as it seeks to tap the emerging market, amid rising disaster payouts in its home country.
The venture will offer fire insurance products that are packaged with insurance that will pay off the policyholder’s mortgages in the event of their death, the report said. It aims to become the market leader in this segment.
Caixa’s partnership with Tokio Marine comes about after an organisational overhaul. The bank holds around a 70% share of Brazil’s home loan market. It previously sold home loan insurance through a joint venture with France-based insurer CNP Assurances.
According to a regulatory filing, Tokio Marine will own 50.01% of the venture. The transaction also includes a 20-year bancassurance deal, where the products with be at Caixa’s branches, leveraging its wide reach in the home loans market.
In recent years, Tokio Marine has embarked on a wide foreign expansion campaign, as it seeks to derive more of its profit from overseas, due to mounting losses at home due to natural disasters, including massive claims due to typhoons Faxai and Hagibis in 2019.
