How Beneva is promoting its direct brand at this Quebec event venue

Canada’s largest mutual insurer is promoting its new Beneva direct-to-consumer brand by being a major sponsor of Quebec City’s major junior hockey team and official presenter of the Videotron Centre’s calendar of events.

Beneva announced Thursday a partnership with Quebecor Sports and Entertainment Group.

Quebec City-based Beneva was formed in 2020 through the merger of La Capitale and SSQ.

The Beneva brand was launched about a year ago. Its branding ad campaign includes sponsorships with the Montreal Alouettes Canadian Football League team as well as the Ottawa Senators National Hockey League team, said Stéphane Morency, executive vice-president and lead, strategy, customer experience and marketing, in an earlier interview.

The sponsorship agreement, with Quebecor, “continues the relationship with La Capitale, which had been a partner of the Videotron Centre and the Quebec Remparts hockey team since 2017,” Beneva said Dec. 2 in a release.

In addition to hockey games, Videotron Centre also hosts concerts. The Offspring, for example, have a concert scheduled Feb. 1, 2022. The venue can host 20,000 for concerts and 18,000 for hockey games.

“The corporate section hitherto known as Le Loft La Capitale has therefore been renamed Le Loft Beneva and redecorated in the new merged entity’s colours. Beneva will also be the official presenter of the Videotron Centre’s calendar of events and the major sponsor of the Quebec Remparts hockey team,” Beneva said Dec. 2.

“Right now, Beneva is a company name but it doesn’t resonate in the market yet. So launching the new brand is a very important milestone for us that’s coming up,” said Christian Fournier, Beneva’s executive vice president and leader of P&C insurance, in an earlier interview with Canadian Underwriter. He was not commenting at that time specifically on the Videotron Centre or the Quebec Remparts.

Before the 2020 merger, Fournier had been senior executive vice president and chief operating officer of La Capitale General.

The merger of La Capitale with SSQ resulted in Canada’s largest mutual insurer if you count both property and casualty and life and health premiums. Wawanesa remains Canada’s largest P&C mutual while Economical demutualized last week and is owned by Definity, which trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

Throughout the last half of 2020, the merged Quebec firm called itself La Capitale-SSQ.

“October 2021 was really the moment when the general public was made aware in Quebec of that merger. We communicated with all the customers and partners so that everybody would be well aware of what’s coming,” Morency told CU earlier.

At that time, Morency said there was no change in the branding of either L’Unique or Unica, the brands through which Beneva distributes insurance through brokers.

Feature image via iStock.com/Marc Dufresne