BB Seguridade Participacoes SA

BOVESPA:BBSE3

Earnings Call Transcript 2022-Q1

[Operator]

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to our conference call to announce the results of the first quarter of 2022. A few housekeeping messages before we get started. This conference call is being recorded and has simultaneous translation into English. If you want to listen to the audio in English, please click on interpretation on the bottom menu of your screen. You're going to see the slides in Portuguese throughout the conference call. If you want to see the slides in English, access it at our Investor Relations website at the address that you can see here. [Operator Instructions].

Today with us, we have Ullisses Assis, CEO of BB Seguridade; and Rafael Sperendio, CFO and IR role.

Now I would like to give the floor to Ullisses, who's going to slide the presentation. Ullisses, please?

[Ullisses Christian Assis, executive]

Thank you, Felipe. Good morning, everyone. It's a great pleasure to be here to talk about our performance in Q1 2022. And our results makes us happy with our performance and chose a lot about the resilience of our company, and we've been seeing it since last year in our more recent conference calls, and we were hoping for the company to change its performance level this year because of constant growth that we are having in our operational results year after year and also as a result of our net investment income coming back to historical levels as we used to have until 2017 with a 2-digit interest rate.

So we have the net investment income and operational results at completely different levels, which make our performance more robust. And despite the loss ratio in our rural insurance, we got to BRL 1.2 billion in the first half, a 21% growth as compared to the first quarter last year.

In addition to our net investment income, as you can see here, BRL 232 million. This is above everything that was reported throughout the year of 2021. And we are very happy because we are building very solid performance. And especially, we are building our future performance because when we analyze collection, pension, premium bonds, our growth is very robust and sustainable in terms of sales. For example, insurance, we have issued BRL 2.8 billion in premiums, 19% higher than we had in the first quarter last year. In pension plans, we have reached BRL 11 billion (sic) [ BRL 13 billion ] in contributions, 21% higher than last year.

In premium bonds, we are recovering leadership in the premium bond market in Brazil with BRL 1.4 billion in collections, 25% higher than last year. These are numbers that make us very excited in terms of building more and more solid results in the short and in the long term.

Another highlight, ever since I joined the company our strategy of partnership and the main channel has always been, is and will be Banco do Brasil, and we really favor channel. But when you're talking about our wish to explore other sales channels. And we got to BRL 112 million in insurance premiums written, accounting for 4% of our total premiums issued.

It's still a small number, but we are very, very happy with that, which demonstrates that our channel diversification strategy is working. We went from 0 partnerships in the middle of last year to 6 partnerships that we have operating, which already accounts for 4% of our total premiums written. And in the mid and long, we hope that this share will increase more and more as a percentage of our revenues.

Now I'm going to talk about something that has helped us greatly. And also to explain it to you, considering the scenario and what we are seeing in terms of open finance and open insurance that is advancing very fast and also in terms of to leverage our sales, both inside and outside the banking channel, we are evolving our trajectory of technological and digital transformation, you can see at the chart of our sales through the digital share has been growing quarter-over-quarter.

And in terms of quantity, we have reached Q1 '22 with 13% share, and we want this total to grow the share of digital as a consequence of it. And we wanted to figure all alternatives so that the bank network will sell more. And it's not just the share of the pie, but we want the whole pie to grow.

When we compare digital numbers with themselves, we see a 30% of products sold through the digital sales channel in more than we had in Q1 '21. So this is not just related to more products. We have a simpler sales process. But we've also been investing in analytical models, and we are investing in a number of business supported by the analytic structure. So it's much more than we did last year. So in 1 quarter, we had the same performance as we had for the whole half of the year last year.

Now when we think in terms of IT in March 2021, we had 10% in July. The first time I talked to you about a road map of deliverables until the end of the year, and 15% of the products already in compliance with the new logic of distribution in all channels. In March, we got to 40% of the products. And in April now, we already have 48%. So almost half of our products, so we have fulfilled half of our road map.

We have invested BRL 93 million in the first quarter, which is 22% than Q1 '21, but our investment this year to deliver 100% of our digital transformation, and we are going to exceed BRL 0.5 billion. So we are going to see a strong acceleration of this process so that we can realize the road map before the end of the year.

Before I give it over to Rafael for numbers, I would like to talk about the diversification of our distribution model. We have come to BRL 112 million in terms of written premiums. And in terms of credit life insurance and rural insurance accounting, 4% of our premiums of credit life insurance was through partners, especially our partner, Banco do Brasil, we want to diversify strategy and 8% of rural insurance. So outside the banking channel and here, focusing very much on unfunded areas. So we want to advance where the bank network doesn't get to.

In December '21, we had operational partnerships, and we've got to March '22 with 6 partnerships. And I had promised late last year that our objective would be to get to 10 new partnerships operating before the end of this year. And we are moving fast towards meeting that goal. And we hope that we will be able to do that even before the timing we've promised to you.

So we are seeing new channels in each one of our companies, Brasilprev, Brasilseg, Brasilcap and also in dental. And also in Selic, we have a department. We have structured department here at the holding through BB Brokerage House so that we can integrate all the strategies because sometimes a partner that we prospect in 1 channel on one of the companies we need to complement with the other company. So this is a strategy that we are taking very seriously. And then we are trying to have a seamless process that is integrated through the entire company.

There are 2 new negotiations with specialized partners for wholesale sales, and we are signing the contract, and we want to advance this as a CapEx, we still have in terms of distribution. And we want to advance fast also in wholesales because we believe we can significantly increase our sales.

So once again, when we look at numbers and we look at the whole, these are small numbers, BRL 112 million, but we started from scratch. And this strategy is going to continue because we do believe that in a few quarters and years, these new channels may play a very significant role in terms of percentages of the total sales of the company.

Now I'm going to give the conference over to Rafael to talk about the numbers in our results, and then I'll be available for the Q&A session.

[Rafael Sperendio, executive]

Thank you, Ullisses. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Starting on Slide #6, talking about our net income. So it grew -- in total, it grew 21% as compared to last year, and we had a contribution of the operational results, but more intensely, even of the investment income. So we -- so investment income has been getting better with higher loss ratios as you are going to see next. But the investment income now has a share that in our understanding is more appropriate as a share of our total performance, accounting for 21%.

A few factors that have affected it the higher Selic rate, increase in volume and also a more active work that we've been doing, we've been reducing our exposure to -- pre-increasing our exposure to post fixed, which is almost 60% of our portfolio that today is marked to market, and this led to a benefit when we see the aggregate results of our companies, of course, respecting all the restrictions that we have in terms of having more flexibility to increase our exposure to post-fixed.

But globally speaking, so our post-exposure has increased significantly, which has a significant impact on our financial income. And then you can see the interest rate curve we have reduced, not just the pre-exposure but not just when you see the breakdown. It's much smaller than what we had in the first quarter last year. And that led to its negative or not so negative marking to market.

So the effect that you all know which is a temporary mismatch between assets and liabilities of our traditional pension plans. Today, that effect was much lower than last year, almost half of that BRL 52 million of positive impact this year as compared to BRL 100 million last year. And we always bring the concept of normalized net income, which is only noise because the total result is 0. If we discounted that effect, our net income would be 1.1 with a 29% growth.

On the next page, you can see an analysis of the net income variation year-on-year, breaking it down through each many components. And we can see here that the main drivers for the growth is #1: The Brasilseg retained earned premiums and there is very strong contribution of stock products. And so in numbers, we have 1/4 of sales through the current period and 3/4 of sales that were done in past periods. And so here at Brasilseg, we are seeing the result of all this effort and this growth that we have noted over the past few years, in addition to a very strong growth that we have seen this year and the main highlights is rural, commercial and business lines.

So in terms of the net investment income, I have explained to you the main results year-on-year, and then revenue from brokerage is also an important factor that has contributed to the growth, but the explanation I have here for earned premiums added to a recovery that is very robust that we have in the pension segment and also in savings in the premium bonds.

Let's go in Brasilprev, we have BRL 21 million increase as compared to our results. So in terms of the assets under management that have increased and an increase of 2 basis points in the basic rate when we look at year-on-year. And this is a reflect of our strategy of diversification, increasing our exposure to multi-markets and also our products that add. So adding all these effects, then we would be talking about a growth of 45% year-on-year.

So the idea here -- on the other hand, so half of this growth was taken up by the higher loss ratio. So all of this in the beginning of the presentation focusing very much on the rural segment. Even though this is a recurring effect regardless of climate events, severity and the intensity of those events, but they usually repeated every 2 years.

When we look at the chart on the right-hand top chart. So here, where you can see here, crop insurance, if we compare this year and last year. So this year was much lower than what we saw in the market as a whole in terms of loss ratio. So this shows how our underwriting policy is very maturity and robust for crop insurance and the competitive advantage that we have of diversification of this risk both in terms of geography and type of crop. So this made it possible for us to have a loss ratio that was almost half of what the market had as a whole.

On the right hand at the bottom, you can see claims reported for crop cycle 2021 in million BRL. So these events are concentrated on almost everything towards the end of the cycle, which was a benefit for last year, but ended up affecting the beginning of this year.

However, it is very clear here that the peak was in January. And from then on, there is a falling trend, which is quite consistent. In April, this number is even smaller than it was in March. And now we are hoping that no such events will occur from now to the end of the year, and this is one of the reasons that we are going to mention in the -- further ahead in the presentation on weather expectation of more significant growth in the company's operational results in future quarters.

On the next slide, here, you can see the main highlights per operation. So insurance, it grew 19% in premium year-on-year. So rural insurance, that grew 45% year-on-year. And then home is a product that we still have huge potential to explore in the bank grew 31%, commercial lines and other reformulated products with huge potential for us to explore in terms of companies as a whole with a 14% growth, very robust performance. The digits for most of our business lines except for the drop of credit life with a shrinking of 11.4%, and this is a consequence of our overall scenario with higher rates and this is an environment where it's more difficult for us to sell credit life insurance.

So at the bottom on the left, we have our main indicators. For insurance, there is drop in combined ratio. So there is higher loss ratio in crop and rural insurance. So there is an increase in terms of life and credit life, which will be better if we compare year-on-year after the second quarter commission rates had a drop, a slight drop explained by the performance of credit life insurance.

So the shrinking does not make the company eligible to receive performance bonds and to receive these performance bonds, and to that's why this is affected by commission rates. And in April, the performance both in life and credit life was much healthier than what we saw in the first half of the year.

Overall admin expenses dropped by 2 points. And the main reason for that are lower contribution for the stability for rural insurance, and this is very much affected by the agricultural industry. In terms of net investment income, we had a high of 135% year-on-year, this is very much in line with everything that I have said in terms of rates. We have a quite significant postexposure.

And lastly, increase in premiums earned as part of the net income, they more than offset the higher loss ratio, making it possible for the company's net income to grow 7% as compared to the first quarter of 2021.

Now moving to pension. And here, you can see an increase in contributions of 21% year-on-year. So total volume of BRL 13 billion. The number of redemptions, even though we have this high as compared to the first quarter last year. It demonstrates a reduction of 30 basis points as compared to what we saw in Q4 '21. Remembering that this rate is always and realized. In April, we saw an even more positive trend, even though we are seeing a quite strong increase in gross inflows, it dropped by BRL 15 million in Q1.

As a reminder, in the first quarter, we had a one-off event of a customer that died, and the reserves were reversed almost in total to his beneficiaries, a reserve of BRL 444 million, if it weren't for this nonrecurring event, this one-off, it would be practically 0 rather than negative by BRL 475 million, which is the full amount.

And in terms of reserves, we grew 5% year-on-year. The multi-market exposure is 32.5% of the total combining PGBL and VGBL. There is a change in the mix of assets under management. Now we have a better mix by 2 basis points, and growing as compared to Q1 '21. And for this reason, revenues have grown 6%, 1 percentage points above the growth in our reserves.

The net investment income was positive. We had a negative result in Q1 '21. So Brasilprev is one of those companies that, as I said, we have a limitation of AUM, and we can't really change this composition, and we had the reverse movement. We had a higher post exposure last year than we have this year, which explains this variation is that last year in the first quarter, we concentrated our allocation of resources. So it takes a while for the company to be able to allocate all the fronts that were imposed in the first half last year. And as time went by, we were able to reallocate those funds in LT and Bs.

And because our obligations are backed to the inflation. And so what explains this is a lower opening in the actual net interest curves. That's why we have a stronger result in the first quarter of '22.

And then we have the composition of factors, 6% growth in revenues, a better efficiency rate. 0.2 percentage points added to this growth in the net investment income. And therefore, the net income grew 57%. So in terms of the breakdown, the highlights in terms of insurance and pension, BRL 23 billion in the new pension plan portfolio, which is that dynamic portfolio of allocation, in which some risk profiles and allocation of the risk factors are dynamic. This accounts for 7% of the total.

Today, we have BRL 9 billion in the open architecture funds with 13 independent managers accounting for 3% of the total, and we have BRL 7 billion in foreign investments. In terms of capital management, which has been a concern in a transition scenario between 2020 and 2021. Today, we are operating with some -- with a buffer we have a solvency with 182.7% and a hedge of 83% of our assets that are bagged to the IGP-M.

Now to the next page. In terms of Brasilcap, our premium bonds, a growth of 25% in collection and net investment income had a significant improvement at 23% high of 40 basis points in the financial margin, which is a result of the change in our mix. And then we have more freedom to work on pre and post with the benefit of the high in a selling rate in the breakdown of assets and also better in terms of marking to market and the opening of the face value and interest rate curve.

So because we have the better investment performance, we are seeing a 10% improvement in net income as compared to Q1 last year. In terms of dental insurance, we had a 4% growth in revenues, an improvement of 20 basis points in EBITDA margins and net income grew 22% year-on-year. And this is directly related to the higher Selic rate and the company's net investment income.

On the next page. So we have better brokerage revenue at BB Corretora, our brokerage house as I said before, there were some one-off events. So in all our lines here, we had an increase in collection both in pension and in insurance. In net margin, we grew 1.6 percentage points. So it grew more than revenues and the explanation is related to our net investment income taking consideration that 100% of the brokerage house assets are related to BI.

So in closing here, this is our guidance for 2022. So what you can see here, the first indicate noninterest operating results, ex holding, we had a growth of 7.7% within a range from 12% to 17%. So here, you can clearly see main reason because we were not within the range of estimated which was the loss ratio of crop insurance. And the scenario that we are hoping from now towards the end of the year, we are going to that interval of the guidance in the second quarter. So there is no reason for us to review our operational results.

In terms of premiums written, so here you can see 18.8% growth and the cap of our estimates was 15%. And the main factor that led to this deviation from the estimates was the increase of rural insurance. This is something that we are going to monitor along the year to later on reassess whether this is appropriate or not as we evolve towards the year.

So in terms of our PGBL and VGBL pension plans reserve. So the range here is from 9% to 13%, and we had 4.1%. So we had a very difficult scenario that we were dealing with. And in comparing year-on-year here, it's no longer appropriate. Because the results last year have varied very little. So we hope that it grows along the quarters this year.

If we see only the variations in reserves, if we look much in contrast with December '21, the growth was 2.6% in 3 months only. So if we only kept this and this is going to be more than enough, and we have this reference number here, which is 10.7% in terms of annualized year-to-date growth. So here, we have a deviation, but we are not seeing any evidence that we need to review these estimates because if we keep our growth rates, it will make it possible for us to meet our guidance during the business year.

So these were the main highlights that we wanted to share with you, and we may now move to our questions-and-answer session.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The first question we have here is from Antonio Ruette from the Bank of America.

[Antonio Gregorin Ruette, analyst]

Congratulations on your results. There are 2 points here on my end. First, related the growth in premiums, you mentioned that you might reassess the guidance of the premium growth in the second quarter because of the growth in rural insurance in the first quarter. Can you tell us more about the expected performance in life and credit life. And we are still seeing the premiums of credit life growing year -- going down year-on-year. And then we have the life in the high single digits. Could you give us more color on the dynamics of these 2 products?

And number two, in terms of the guidance, would be the growth of your technical reserves. As we said in the first quarter, this guidance is expecting an inflow that is very close to 0, considering the carrying charge for the year. So I would like to explore more of the strategy. Do you think this is a very aggressive environment in terms of the guidance? What is your expectation?

[Ullisses Christian Assis, executive]

Okay, Antonio. I'm going to start answering and then Rafael may complement. Now talking a little bit about our premiums return and focusing more on credit life and life. Credit life is very much related to credits conditions. And we can see on the financials of other market players, the higher Selic rate had a direct impact on credit. Therefore, credit life has been going down for all insurance companies along the year. And we are even suffering a little bit less than other players. But with the performance that is falling short from what we had expected, but because this is very sensitive to credit and the Selic rate has affected that appetite.

As to life, ever since the launch of our new life insurance products, we had a growth that is much above the market. In the first 3 months of this year, in fact, we had the lower growth. But also because of some internal adaptations in April, we have seen a very strong adaptation of life sales and also credit life with a stronger sales prospects, and we think that life sales is going to accelerate very much after the second quarter.

We are very optimistic. Our new product line was very well received by the market and the dynamics that we have been adopting with Banco do Brasil's network, and we have been seeing it since April or early May. We've seen a different level. In terms of credit life, as I said, this is very sensitive to credit and in April, we've been seen a growth and we are adapting our portfolio, and we are adapting our credit life in terms of businesses, so that we can capture as much businesses and premium as possible and giving to the bank the opportunity of working on this customer base, even with what has been contracted before.

Rafael, can you talk about pension?

[Rafael Sperendio, executive]

Yes, sure. As to the guidance of the growth of results of pension plan, you're right. This is right. The inflow is very close to 0. That's an accurate perception. This is considering the scenario that we are dealing with, and there is a direct effect. So higher inflation, and as a consequence, a higher level of debt. So it compresses the available income for the population to save. This is going on all over the world. It's a global phenomenon.

It's not just a domestic scenario. For this reason, we prefer to be more conservative in terms of our estimates of growth of reserves because of the overall scenario that we are in. As months go by, if we identify that there is an opportunity in the overall scenario, if we see that it's changing, we'll change our policy. For now, this is not our base scenario. Our base scenario is now to keep it as it is, even though we have a prospect of growth, which is higher than we had initially expected. So this scenario is still very challenging in terms of net inflows. That's why we prefer to be conservative now to start with.

[Ullisses Christian Assis, executive]

Okay. So you talked about rural insurance in your first question, and I forgot to mention it. So in terms of rural insurance, we are very optimistic because there's a new crop coming and in the overall scenario of the rural there. First is there's a downside of us being not of claims. But whenever we pay claims, there is a higher demand. So I would tell you that today, the market is very demanding. So we are -- there's a lot of demand and the market is -- it's not that it is conservative, but the competition has offers that are lower than the demand.

And if we keep our level of subscriptions, which has proven to be very effective, especially considering the numbers that Rafael gave, but we are going to use the opportunities in terms of underwriting policy is very effective.

But we see more room for us to capture lots of revenues with a lot of inflow, very much on the demand side. But when we compare ourselves to more developed markets, we are still very low in terms of penetration, 15% penetration of insurance in Brazil in terms of planted area compared to the US where they have 80%. So we want to explore this market with a lot of responsibility, but occupying our -- something that we would call our rightful space in this scenario.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Kaio Prato.

[Kaio Penso Da Prato, analyst]

Ullisses, Rafael, first is a follow-up in what Antonio asked about credit life insurance. Could you give us more detail whether this shrinking is due to a lower volume of credit coming from Banco do Brasil as a whole, whether this is related to a lower average ticket, considering the product that you have recently launched or because of lower or drop in renegotiations. Could you tell us how you see the appetite of Banco do Brasil in terms of credit along this year?

And also, Ullisses mentioned credit life for companies. And as the company has approved a new PRONAF, do you operate on those lines? Could you expect any upside coming from that line, too?

[Ullisses Christian Assis, executive]

Kaio, I'm going to start answering your question. Well, we what saw in the first quarter is that our penetration in manageable line for credit life insurance hasn't changed. So what happens is the origination of some lines that focus on credit life insurance is lower than what we had in Q1 '21, which is okay.

Related to lower rates and there is a higher demand of customers for the renewal of credit at lower rates. Once that cycle is inverted, and sometimes, if it's not inverted or the mere fact that rates keep the same. So this movement seeking lower rates and then this stops and then the increase that we have, which is the most favorable breadth to cross-sell credit life insurance at the origination of credit points, whether it is new credit or at the renewal of the credit in effect, it doesn't take place because customers do not come from renewal anymore.

So this explains this drop in terms of premiums written for credit life insurance, when we look at Q1 '22 as compared to Q1 '21.

[Rafael Sperendio, executive]

You asked another question, Kaio, about PRONAF. So our operation at PRONAF is very marginal. We are not really focusing on that line.

[Kaio Penso Da Prato, analyst]

And just to understand better, is there any reason for you why you are not so optimistic with this line? And the second question is more specific about the changes in technical reserves at Brasilseg this quarter, there was a reversal of technical reserves now in the first quarter. I would just like to understand better whether this is related to the events on the rural segment or this is related to any other one-off event.

[Rafael Sperendio, executive]

No special reason. We really prefer to keep our operations in other lines. This is our model of operation. As to your second question, I'm sorry, the change in the profile of technical reserves at Brasilseg, that's what you asked?

[Kaio Penso Da Prato, analyst]

Yes, I think there was a reversal of technical reserves at Brasilseg. Was it because of rural effects or any other -- anything else specific?

[Rafael Sperendio, executive]

So let me give you a little bit more details. So we have in terms of premiums earned. In terms of premiums, Britain there deferred in 5 years as Britain premiums drops in terms of origination. As it goes down, it exceeds the volume of constitutions. So there are fewer premiums coming in, but more premiums being booked. So this is one of the factors that explains this change on technical reserves.

Now if there's anything more specific then would need more details. So which reserves you are talking about. And I don't have the reserves here at the top of my mind. So what comes to my mind now in terms of reserves that may have had this behavior is the P&G for credit life.

[Ullisses Christian Assis, executive]

Kaio, just complementing just one point of what Rafael mentioned in terms of credit life. As I said, we've been working on other alternatives that are not just credit life, but we are paying close attention at the market in terms of prices, we're analyzing many possibilities through market research of us being able to make some price adjustments and what we expected may also help us to leverage it a little bit more over the next few months.

As I said in April, we are seeing a strong increase in the hiring of our credit life in the backlog so this is a cheaper product, but even so we need to pay close attention to what the competition is doing, and we think there's a lot of room for us to change that.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Tiago Binsfeld from Goldman Sachs.

[Tiago Binsfeld, analyst]

I have 2 questions to ask. Number one is loss ratio on rural insurance. You gave many details, but that would see your projection into the future. How are you expecting in the second quarter? Do you -- is there possibility of any claims being reversed. What about the climate risks? Are there any climate risks that you are seeing this year? And whether there might be any increases in rural insurance?

[Rafael Sperendio, executive]

So as to the loss ratio, so the effect on the line persists. And so there is nothing that might lead us to a new event in terms of what we are seeing in the first quarter, much to the opposite. And I missed the beginning of your question. I'm sorry.

[Tiago Binsfeld, analyst]

As to the second quarter, do you think there are any claims might be reversed?

[Rafael Sperendio, executive]

Yes. And we see a volume in terms of the number of claims that we are going to see that is really a record. And we are making payments, analyzing experiences and everything, and I would classify it as a residual volume. And today, I wouldn't -- today, March '22, I wouldn't bet on a large volume of reversal in the second quarter. We've been seeing, in fact, Tiago, effect in April. The notices are much below what we had been seeing and this trend has continued in May. So we are expecting to go back to normal.

[Tiago Binsfeld, analyst]

Okay. Very clear. And if you allow me to ask a second question to Ullisses, specifically. Could you give us more details about the partnerships? Can you give us any examples of partnerships that you have in grow? And in credit life, do you expect to have partnerships for other special products such as life?

[Ullisses Christian Assis, executive]

Yes. Thiago, we divide our operation front on 3 fronts. One of those fronts is exclusively for us to operate much more effectively in distribution channels to complement Banco do Brasil. So the bank has 19,000 contracts, selling credit and other insurance products and 14,000 transactional in terms of someone paying a power bill or anything. How can we explore these channels better?

Until very recently, our products were being sold in those channels. We started with credit life in the first quarter. The sales are very much focused on credit life, and we are focusing on projects also with -- Selic products so that they can be sold in these other channels. So this requires strong integration required from a training, sales promotions and many things that we are looking after so that these channels become representative.

Also adapting our portfolio because when I talk about transactional channels, we need low-cost products that are very, very easy to understand, both by sales persons and buyers, too. So we have a distribution strategy. So in order to adapt these channels as fast as we can so that we have a more significant sales volume. And for example, life that you have just mentioned is a product that we can sell in these channels.

Other front is very much focused to rural insurance as a whole. And in terms of rural insurance, we have closed partnerships with many cooperatives. And then we have Bela Agricola and Galaxy, [indiscernible] and many other cooperative and major rural private cooperatives that are joining our partnerships. And in addition to that, we also are focusing on [indiscernible], the local technical assistance, local agronomist that provide consulting, and many of them are registered at Banco Do Brasil, and they were not selling rural insurance.

So today, we have 200 agro banking correspondents also working with us. When I shared with you the numbers in terms of our productivity, we are focusing on unfunded areas so that we are not competing with other channels. So we're focusing on existing Banco do Brazil customers. The idea is to make the whole pie grow rather than eating up other slices. And so we are focusing especially on cooperatives in this line of technical assistance since we want to get to 500. This is our ambition to get to the end of the year with 500 effectively operating.

Our other front is focusing on partnerships with banks, whether they are digital banks, traditional banks and major retailers that have capacity to distribute our projects. We are closing partnerships with, for example, the Brazilian [indiscernible], focusing on premium bonds and then other 2 partnerships focusing over wholesales and there are 2 other partnerships with digital banks to sell insurance and life insurance or rather pension plans, and then we are ready to promote, and we are going to announce that to the market. But effectively, these 3 fronts are very well defined, integrated in all the companies, and we see that there is a very interesting portfolio complementation between our companies.

Sometimes our partnership at Brazil prospects with a dedicated business perspective team, it may be complemented with [indiscernible] and then we can sell life insurance, home insurance or others depending on the profile of the partner.

So we went from scratch from 0 in July last year, and we are getting to 4% of insurance premiums, which seems very little, but [indiscernible], we started from 0. It's a lot, and we are going to see this number growing a lot in the mid and long term.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from [indiscernible] from Banco Inter.

[Unknown Analyst]

Okay. My question is related to Brasilprev. We saw that the level of solvency in 73%, and then 93% of IGP-M. Can we expect Brasilprev to control this volatility better distribution of your proceeds? So you had kind of held it back in order to control solvency, this regulation strategy. Would you expect at least this year Brasilprev to go back to having a distribution of profits to contribute every share of the holding as a whole?

[Ullisses Christian Assis, executive]

Well, Mateos, we are not saying no to that possibility, this may happen, of course, but in terms of timing. Can you hear us now? Mateos, can you hear us? Everything is normal here. All right. So let me just complete and then we can send the answer to you in writing. So we are not saying no to this possibility. And in terms of timing, this will happen in the second half of the year. So in terms of agricultural or crop insurance, so we have the payout, and this may be slightly below our historical averages or the average that we're expecting for the year. So the payout may be slightly lower and stronger in the second half of the year, and we are expecting more visibility in the scenario. So we have this buffer in Brasilprev today.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Luis Fernando Azevedo from Banco Safra.

[Luis Azevedo, analyst]

I have 2 questions. The first is a follow-up on rural insurance, and you said that there is a -- there has been an increase in demand and a better perception of the product, have you changed the way to price it? And it seems that the loss ratio is kind of unusual. So are you trying to price the product that in the midterm could bring down the loss ratio. And the second is about the broker and your expectation in terms of performance bonus. You said that for credit life, it's a lower.

And so which products are eligible to performance bonuses and the expectation for the year is going to go down, and whether you're expecting any growth in that item or line.

[Ullisses Christian Assis, executive]

I'm going to talk a little bit to -- Rafael to talk about credit life. In terms of rural insurance in terms of pricing, yes, we're paying close attention at that. And then we have adopted that. But this is an ongoing process, not just in terms of rural insurance, but other insurance lines in which you pay close attention to the market. But this in specific the rural insurance demand has been growing and the appetite of the competition slows down because some insurance companies have suffered a lot also because of their size in terms of loss ratio. And we have are paying close attention at that, and this is a constant process that we've been managing on a day-to-day basis.

[Rafael Sperendio, executive]

Okay. Just to answer the second question Luis asked. Well, Luis, in terms of performance bonus. The 2 projects that are eligible are life and credit life. So we are working with a more conservative scenario for credit life, assuming that we are not going to have received anything back coming from credit life insurance in terms of performance bonuses. Looking at the year as a whole, even though it's always important to remind you, it's much lower than in terms of the impact of the revenue because most of the revenue is offset by expenses of the insurance company.

[Operator]

We have a question here that came in writing at the Q&A that is also related to rural and the loss ratio is our reinsurance policy, whether you want to keep our CapEx in the first quarter, all expenses that we had. So if we have 80% reinsurance is used to have in the past and what is our expectation in the next cycle in the next crop?

[Rafael Sperendio, executive]

There has not been any change in our reinsurance policy. Last year, it was 20%, and we are going to keep the same thing for the next cycle, 20% retention, 80% reinsurance.

[Operator]

So another question that we have every call that is related to [indiscernible] Brasilprev is our expectation in terms of payout of dividends for the year. They want to know what we see in terms of a payout.

[Rafael Sperendio, executive]

Today, we are working when payout going back to the level that we saw until 2019, something between 80%, 90%. This is something that is absolutely feasible. And whether the -- we are going to pay out the dividend in terms of the first or second half of the year. But for the whole year, it will be at levels that will be similar to what we used to see before 2019.

[Operator]

Now we don't have any more questions. No hands are raised no Q&A questions. So Rafael and Ullisses, if you want to close the call, it's okay.

[Ullisses Christian Assis, executive]

I would just like to thank everyone for your participation in our conference call, and I am available along to our company's Investor Relations team if you have any additional questions that haven't been answered in our conference call. Likewise, I would like to thank everybody for taking part here with us, and we are very optimistic with our performance in the first quarter. And once again, as we have more appropriate net investment income and loss ratios go back to normal combined with operational performance that is very robust, we are very optimistic in terms of having increasingly better performance for the rest of the year.

[Operator]

So we are now ending our conference call for the first quarter of 2022, and once we finish our Zoom session, if you can answer the feedback questionnaire, we would be very grateful. Thank you very much and have a good day.

[Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]