Allianz Group

Overview

Allianz Group is one of the world’s largest financial services providers, a Munich-headquartered group whose core businesses are insurance and asset management (Insurance Business). Founded in Berlin in 1890 as a transport and accident insurer, it now counts more than 126 million private and corporate clients in over 70 countries and employs over 155,000 people worldwide (Insurance Business). It offers property and casualty insurance, life and health insurance, credit insurance, travel insurance and asset management services through brands and subsidiaries including PIMCO and Euler Hermes (Insurance Business). Allianz Australia, which traces back to Manufacturers Mutual Insurance, sits within this group (Insurance Times).

From Berlin transport insurer to a global group

Allianz was established in Berlin in 1890 by insurance specialist Carl Thieme and banker Wilhelm Finck (Insurance Business). After putting up starting capital of four million marks, Thieme and Finck entered Allianz into the commercial register at the municipal court of Berlin on 5 February, initially as a transport and accident insurer (Insurance Business). Its first international move came in 1893, when it opened an office in London to serve German customers insured against transport losses abroad (Insurance Business). By the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, the insurer had operations in the USA, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Italy, Belgium, France and the Balkans, and the war marked both the end of a period of continuous growth and the company’s first hiring of women (Insurance Business).

Despite the economic crisis that followed Germany’s defeat, Allianz managed to become Germany’s largest motor insurer by the 1920s, and it branched beyond transport and accident lines by creating a life-insurance arm in the same decade (Insurance Business). A wave of mergers in the 1920s ended in 1929, with Bayerische Versicherungsbank, Stuttgarter Verein and Frankfurter Allgemeine Versicherungs-AG joining Allianz (Insurance Times). From 1933, Allianz became an important part of the National Socialist dictatorship’s economic system, with general director Kurt Schmitt appointed economics minister in Hitler’s cabinet (Insurance Business). Schmitt resigned from the post in 1935 due to ill health and later returned to Allianz in an advisory capacity, and like many German companies Allianz faced economic ruin at the end of the Second World War (Insurance Business). Its headquarters transferred from Berlin to Munich in 1949, while its life arm moved from Berlin to Stuttgart (Insurance Times).

The modern group was built by acquisition, and a structural change made that possible: in 1985 Allianz created the holding company Allianz AG in order to facilitate its international mergers and acquisitions (Insurance Business). Foreign expansion had already stepped up in the 1970s, reaching Great Britain, the Netherlands, Spain and Brazil, with a US property and casualty business established in 1976 (Insurance Times). Later deals included the takeover of Cornhill Insurance of London in 1986, the state insurance company of the former German Democratic Republic in 1990, and Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company of Novato, California, in 1991 (Insurance Times). In 1997 Allianz acquired Assurances Generales de France of Paris, and in 1999 it purchased the US asset manager PIMCO Advisors of Newport Beach, California, which joined the group in May 2000 (Insurance Times).

What Allianz does today

Allianz describes its business through its insurance and asset-management arms, with property and casualty, life and health, credit and travel insurance alongside asset management (Insurance Business). Its asset-management side is anchored by PIMCO, one of the world’s premier fixed-income investment managers, while Euler Hermes provides credit insurance covering bonding, guarantees and collections for business-to-business trade receivables (Insurance Business). In Europe the group has an extensive footprint, with a presence spanning Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and many other markets (Insurance Business). In North America its subsidiaries include Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America, Allianz Global Investors and PIMCO, alongside its global corporate and specialty business (Insurance Business). The group’s chief executive is Oliver Bäte, listed among its key people on its trade-press company profile (Insurance Business).

The Australian connection

The Australian story is older than a single subsidiary listing suggests, and it runs through Manufacturers Mutual Insurance (Insurance Times). Allianz purchased a stake in the Sydney-based Manufacturers’ Mutual Insurance Group in 1995, the company that is today Allianz Australia (Insurance Times). That deal was part of a wider Asia-Pacific push: Allianz Asia-Pacific serves 21 million customers in more than 15 markets, and the insurer has been present in the region since 1910, when it began providing fire and marine insurance in the coastal cities of China (Insurance Business). In 1997 Allianz became the first foreign life insurance company to be granted permission to operate in China since 1949 (Insurance Business).

What this profile does not claim

Customer and employee figures are trade-press figures as reported on the Insurance Business company page, not independently audited. The year Allianz converted to a Societas Europaea is not asserted here, because sources disagree between 2005 and 2006, and the life arm’s founding year is given only as the 1920s for the same reason. Post-2000 history beyond the PIMCO acquisition, including the Dresdner Bank sale and recent annual results, is not covered in this profile, because the relevant source pages could not be read in full at the research date. Nothing here asserts Allianz’s current market ranking, since the sources read in full describe it only as one of the world’s largest financial services providers.