Cares-Assistance – a death benefit in collaboration with Marnic Vandenbroucke
A broker who wanted to provide more than just financial support to his clients. Marnic Vandenbroucke is a man with an idea, and one we believe in: assistance in the event of the death of a family member. Co-creation made it possible to create Cares Assistance, a great partnership and valuable service founded from scratch by Marnic Vandenbroucke and AXA Partners.
The approach: it starts with a man with an idea and then co-creation comes into play
After fifteen years as a broker and having the feeling that he could do more than 'just give money', Marnic Vandenbrooucke wanted to offer even more support to his clients. From feeling limited to only being able to offer financial support when providing assistance, regardless of the claim, he came up with the idea of creating a "family assistance" service to help families through the most difficult moments in their lives. What is there that is more difficult than a death?
Transparent collaboration and a committed partner
The partnership came about after many intense discussions and through the tireless drive of Viviane Schepens, Business Development Manager at AXA Partners. Both Marnic Vandenbroucke and AXA Partners play the roles that they can fulfil best: Marnic Vandenbroucke created the concept on the basis of his experience and knowledge of the market, and AXA Partners supplemented this with its strong network of service providers, as well as providing its expertise. This combination and the absolute dedication of both Marnic and AXA Partners to finding solutions for unmet social needs and delivering the most valuable service possible, has made Cares-Assistance the wonderful product we know today.
‘I really appreciate the empathy and the way in which AXA Partners, actually an important global player, almost totally plays down its role in a project, apparently without a care. AXA Partners' primary interest was in the final product and the service to the customer, not brand recognition and profit.’
– Marnic Vandenbroucke
The result: a service that eases many of the burdens associated with a death
Cares Assistance responds to the unbelievable inundation of problems and challenges faced by the next of kin before and after a death. The most revolutionary part of this assistance is that Marnic Vandenbroucke is the very first private organization to offer palliative assistance. So, this assistance actually helps customers as soon as they are in their terminal life phase. And not only before and at the time of death, because Cares Assistance and AXA Partners assist the next of kin on psychological, operational/logistics and legal matters, even up to a year after.
The supporting pillars
The final product can be divided into three main supporting pillars
Death assistance
A personalized process where customers can choose the shape and form of their death assistance. This includes many forms, from emotional unburdening and logistical assistance to administrative assistance.
Assistance abroad
The assistance provided can include repatriation, early return and expatriation.
Optional: Back to your home country
A funeral in the country of origin is all arranged with Cares-Assistance. In these cases too, we take care of all the practical, legal and administrative aspects.
And how is the future looking for this collaboration?
The first new combination product was already introduced at the end of January 2020: FUNERAL Care, whereby a funeral insurance (life-long death benefit) is combined with the death benefit. In the future, we want to offer more of these services to help ease our customers' suffering at this unhappy time.
Our customers always come first, so the quality of our services is always the top priority. And we are continuously looking for new health services that could help people in times of illness or imminent death. I am sure that our good cooperation and weekly contacts with AXA Partners, will make us able to guarantee these new innovative services in future, through co-creation aimed at providing the best assistance to our customers during difficult times in their lives.
– Marnic Vandenbroucke
