Business Elite – COO of the Year 2016

At Aioi Nissay Dowa Europe, we are Toyota’s main captive insurance and solutions provider in the regions of Europe and Africa. Toyota is the largest shareholder of MS&AD and for half a century we have had a strong partnership in both Japan and worldwide. Toyota Insurance Management was established in 1999 as a joint venture between Aioi Nissay Dowa Europe and Toyota Financial Services Europe. Today, Toyota Insurance works across 23 markets in Europe.

Alongside our continued growth, we have enhanced our set up including acquisitions e.g. of the UK ‘s leading telematics insurance and big data providers, “Insure the box” and “BIG Telematics”. These acquisitions have tremendously benefitted our growth strategy, and will continue to do so in the future.

As we are backed by the largest insurer in Japan – MS&AD Holdings, we are able to draw on a wide variety of skill sets and industry expertise. This allows us to cover all aspects of insurance activities that would normally be split between a broker, an agent, an insurer, a reinsurer, an administrator and so on. This allows us to look at insurance opportunities in a holistic way, taking each potential element into account from both an individual perspective, and also as a part of the whole solution.

As for my role, I act as Group COO of Aioi Nissay Dowa Europe Companies and as CEO of Toyota Insurance Management Europe, as well as undertaking BOD assignments in different group companies including Insure the Box Group. I have been working here since 2000, and throughout this time have been involved across various different areas.

Prior to this experience, I spent many years with top consulting and audit firms. I initially began as the CEO for the German office and moved on to various additional and different roles on a European level before taking on today’s roles several years ago.

As for the company, they opened their first office in the UK , which then extended to offices in France, Germany, Nordics, Spain and Italy. Soon after, to expanded our horizons even further to areas such as Russia, Kazakhstan, Poland and many more.

In terms of our services, we provide a highly diverse range of services in order to cater for our broad range of clientele. First and foremost, we provide automotive insurance solutions for Toyota related dealerships and large dealer groups. Alongside this, we also provide services and maintenance products for vehicles. Our insurance solutions are quite extensive, and include extended warranty, classic car, fleet, telematics and cross selling, among others. Our clients include Toyota customers, retailers, insurance customers, retailers’ customers, and large corporations.

Despite the myriad services we provide, our objective is quite simple. This is to ensure the right insurance products are available for Toyota customers, at the right time, at the right price and to the right quality. By doing this, we are able to support Toyota Motor Europe, Toyota Financial Services, National Marketing and Sales Entities, retailers and partners alike in meeting the needs of our customers.

Despite the very competitive automotive market environment, we continue to do well and continue to expand in terms of territories and product development. The key challenges are IOT and connected devices solutions alongside with new mobility concepts, EV, Hydrogen and the enhanced autonomous driving technology. With this in mind, we will continue investing into future solutions by working closely with our long term partnerships.

Looking further into 2016 and beyond, we are confident that will continue to grow and prosper. As previously mentioned, we will continue to address the many changes and developments happening in our industry. Furthermore, we also need to watch the political consequences of issues in Europe such as the potential exits of Britain and Greece from the European Union.

As the leader of a highly successful company, I am incredibly proud to have our success recognised by Wealth & Finance magazine. Furthermore, it will provide us with the motivation to continue supporting MS&AD and Toyota’s future profitable growth and development.

Despite our success to date, we are always careful that we are not caught resting on our laurels. In fact, we never rest in order to create permanent improvement and efficiency improvement via Kaizen activities to create better operations, permanent enhanced customer satisfaction and a world with less accidents and ensure that everyone can be safer than ever before.

Michael Kainzbauer

Email: [email protected]