"The Processes of Major Insurers Limit Them"

Prima, the Italian insurer, has significantly grown in the 10 years since its founding, capturing a 10% market share in its home country. It also leads in online insurance contracts, qualities they aim to replicate in Spain and the UK, the other two markets they operate in.

According to Ignacio Castilla, director of the Spanish subsidiary, the key lies in the software they have developed, allowing them to offer much more competitively priced policies without losing profitability.

For now, there are no plans for international expansion beyond the three countries where they are present, nor is there any plan to offer motorcycle policies at the moment.

Given that they have a MotoGP team, Prima Pramac, Castilla conducted an interview with several media outlets, including ABC, during the Jerez race.

We are focused on offering a great experience at a good price. We are not here to reinvent the wheel, but to provide what the customer wants in a fairly standardised market. That is, the insurance product—especially the motor branch—is straightforward. We simply ensure that the process and experience for the customer are as comfortable as possible, because it is a tedious process.

We have very powerful proprietary technology that allows us to be very transparent and competitive, and the Spanish and Italian markets still—and I believe it will not change—have price as the main purchasing factor.

We do not sell technology, but we have a sales platform, a customer service platform, a back-office, a claims management platform, a pricing engine... Prima is a recipe, not a secret ingredient. It's about being a little better in all those links.

I often use the term risk selection to refer to what is underwriting, pricing, fraud prevention... everything that allows us to know or estimate better than the market—because that is where the true competitive advantage is—what the expected risk of a customer is.

Honestly, traditional companies allow us to be several steps ahead. Even if you have the technology and capability, their own systems and data management processes limit them. This is what allowed us to grow so much in Italy, where we closed 2024 with 1.25 billion euros in premiums.

There, we are the leaders in the online market, we grew by 47% and achieved an operating result of 104 million. If we look at the figures of the major Spanish or Italian insurance companies, most are still losing money since the inflationary crisis.

In Spain, they tripled their subscribed premiums to 20 million. What are your goals for 2025?

This year we want to reach 44 million, which is more than double what we did in 2024. We do not publish targets for the following years, but you can imagine a very similar growth path.

The key for us, besides growing and proving we can consolidate, are the business fundamentals, that our claims ratio guarantees that we can replicate the value proposition of Italy.

In this regard, 2024 has been a giant step and we are already underwriting claims figures at the level of other established players in the Spanish market, so we believe we could replicate the results of Italy.

José Manuel Inchausti from Mapfre criticised insurance companies whose appeal is price. What is your opinion on this?

Claims are the key, and that is why analytical and technological capability is so important when selecting risk, because it allows you to improve your price without having to do so at the expense of your margins. Therefore, we are one of the most aggressive price players, but also one of the most profitable.

Are Italian and Spanish consumers different?

To be fair, if we think about the customer and the consumer, probably the two most similar markets—at least of those I know in Europe, I do not know them all—are Italy and Spain. If we compare them with the other major markets, with France, with Germany, if we include the UK, they are the most similar.

There is a substantial difference, which is in the distribution channels, that is, how the business is distributed among the different distribution channels. In Spain, the mediated part is very similar to Italy and still represents a very important part of the business, because we are countries where mediation and the figure of the mediator add value. In fact, in Italy right now it is the main growth lever.

And then, in direct sales, there is a difference that makes the Spanish market a bit more complex, and that is that the comparators—which are a fairly easy channel to enter, although you then have to compete on price—are very aggressive and here we have consolidated as one of the main players.

How are the workshops that service your claims chosen? Do you have your own network?

Right now, as we are also a small player—talking about reaching 45 million in 2024 in a sector of 11 billion—what we have done during 2024 is start developing our own claims management strategy, because until then we had been subcontracting it.

We are leveraging existing networks, because what they allow us is, on the one hand, a capillarity that with our size and operational capacity would be very costly to develop—that is, having workshops basically in all provinces and in all cities or relevant urban centres, not just the capitals. And they also guarantee us a quality in those workshops that, again, working on it one by one is a task that takes years.

To be honest, right now, negotiating one by one with the workshops, we would have little room for manoeuvre. When you are a consolidated player—call it Mutua, Axa, Allianz—and you reach the 15 largest workshops in Madrid, they know you can guarantee them a volume that allows you to get competitive rates.

For us, it is much more practical—and it can probably be complemented in the coming years—to develop an agreement with an already established network and, from there, scale up. When you have large enough portfolio segments to justify your own network, then hybridise the strategy.