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Thank you for your interest in our coöperation and annual report

The second year of corona, the Yarden takeover and integration, good results and embarking on a new course. That's 2021 in a nutshell.

Jon van Dijk (left),  Edzo Doeve and Jack van der Putten

There is no escaping the fact that 2021 started and ended in lockdown. After more than a year of protective measures, by the summer people were starting to think we were slowly moving out of the pandemic. Life even seemed ‘normal’ for a while in September but, as the number of infections rose again in the autumn, society was forced to revert to restrictions. Our employees saw it all happening again as mortality rates rose. Although it took a lot of energy to scale back up for this new pandemic wave, we stayed true to DELA’s principles. Convinced of our vision that every goodbye should be respectful, our work continued. The pressure on colleagues increased due to the rise in the number of funerals, which in turn led to more absence through illness, quarantines, children at home and care leave. We helped and supported each other throughout and are proud of the way DELA coped. With all due respect to other employees, we would like to especially thank those on the frontline of our funeral company and the people who supported them.

The Yarden takeover was realised in the summer as DELA safely (re)accommodated around one million insured people. Yarden had been suffering financial issues for some time due to the continued low interest rates and resulting high financial obligations. The idea behind the takeover was that a strong collective would support a weaker one to create a single, even stronger collective. Thanks to the takeover, DELA welcomed around one million policyholders as well as a large number of funeral centres and crematoriums. This increased our scale and enhanced DELA’s coverage in the Netherlands with its own locations. It is a good example of a win-win situation: the takeover allows DELA to offer Yarden financial stability with protection against inflation and a reinforced service provision while increasing the chance of profit distribution for our own members in the long term.  

The takeover meetings started in 2019. While the process was long, both parties always believed we had to do what was right for everyone, acceptable for society and fitting for who we are... And we are pleased with the result.

There is still a lot of work to do in terms of integration. Our primary focus is on fulfilling our promises to members and clients. While we cannot unfortunately offer all staff job security, we are approaching the process carefully, with respect and maximum transparency, and taking the time to ensure a proper integration. Following a sizeable operation involving many integration and formation plans, all Yarden employees had been informed of their future by the end of 2021. The plans were approved by the works councils of both Yarden and DELA, marking the completion of a major goal for 2021.

Customer satisfaction was once again very high, although it did come under pressure in the Netherlands during the final quarter due to the reduced reachability of our customer contact centre. Many callers had questions about the necessary improvement of access security to our online services, and understaffing due to the pandemic also played a role. DELA Belgium realised a slight improvement in customer satisfaction, with a significant improvement for the customer service department.

Up to and including 2020, DELA had used the Great Place to Work (GPtW) survey to measure employee satisfaction. This method had brought us a lot over the years, continuously stimulating us to improve. Despite achieving first place several years in a row, however, we looked for a new benchmark based on our conviction as an organisation that there is always more to learn. The benchmark we chose to use involves a survey by Effectory and the initial results have been good. Compared to the average of all participating companies we scored higher in all themes. Comparing our scores to the best performing companies showed that room for improvement remains. This was exactly the point of the exercise of course and we have already set to work to achieve this.

DELA has seen growth in the number of people insured in all three countries that we serve. DELA Netherlands, Belgium and Germany each autonomously welcomed more than 30,000 insured people. The so-called ‘free market’ funerals lagged behind our growth plan in the first half of 2021. This was partly due to the fact that, as a market leader, we applied the COVID protective measures in the strictest sense, which cost us customers. In the second half of the year, when fewer restrictive measures applied and we were able to offer similar services to our competitors, we realised a clear recovery in this segment. Now, in 2022, we are working on further increasing our commercial strength in this market segment.  

DELA has an excellent reputation. The takeover of Yarden and our visibility in relation to the pandemic helped further improve this in 2021, giving us the highest reputation score seen to date.

Financially, the results for 2021 are in line with our goals. The operational result improved by 41 percent to €53 million. The investment result was a considerable €646 million. While DELA’s business model with its offensive investment strategy means the value of our investments fluctuates every year, this was certainly to our advantage in 2021 with a net yield of 9.3 percent. We ended the year with a group result after tax of €435 million. Although this is a fine outcome, it doesn’t mean much in DELA’s case: where we were able to share profits in years of loss, this was not the case in 2021 due to the extremely low interest rates. Our results fluctuated considerably due to our investment mix. Everything ultimately revolves around our solvency, and this was undeniably robust at 266 percent by the end of 2021. This allows us to keep the premium increase for the ‘natura’ (in-kind) funeral policy low for our members over time. Thankfully, we were also able to limit funeral cost inflation in 2021.

In addition to the high volume of activities caused by COVID-19 and the Yarden takeover, DELA successfully embarked on a new course based on solidarity & continuity. We are placing membership centre state in all the countries in which we operate under the ‘saying goodbye and sharing memories’ banner. This goes far beyond providing insurance and funeral services alone. It builds on initiatives from previous years, with an increased focus that continues outside the DELA brand under the flag of the cooperative. Taking solidarity & continuity as the starting point, our InnovationLab is looking at new domains in the Netherlands in order to build an additional pillar for the cooperative. While this requires lots of patience, the first steps have been taken and we are used to long-term projects and distant horizons.

At the time of writing this annual report we were shocked by the sudden outbreak of war in Ukraine. This makes it harder for us to look to the future with clarity. There is a strong sense of engagement with the events in Ukraine and the millions of refugees, including among our staff. While this affects our operations in various ways, we have to remain confident in our strength. Or more to the point: the conflict in Eastern Europe makes it even more important to reconsider our own values and fight to preserve them.

The DELA cooperative celebrated its 85th birthday on 11 March 2022 – a wonderful milestone. In the decades in which we’ve been active, DELA has stayed loyal to who we are and what we represent. Nowadays, we are a cooperative of millions of individuals, and to keep with the times we will continue to move with the social, economic and technological changes and stretch our boundaries further. Both now and into the distant future.

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