HEALTH CARE ORGANISATIONS

Health Care Organisations

Health Care Organisations

Allianz Insurance Corporation and Phönix Life

The Allianz Insurance Corporation was founded in 1890 in Berlin as a joint stock company with a capital of 4 million marks. It was initially licensed to provide transportation and accident insurance (Roloff & Mosser, 1991), as well as reinsurance in the fields of life, accident, fire, and transportation. In reality, it was a daughter company of the Munich Reinsurance Co. (Munich Re, founded in 1880), whose driving personalities - General Director Carl Thieme (1844-1924) and banker Wilhelm Finck (1848-1924), the chairman of the supervisory board - decided to enter the direct insurance business in Berlin in order to gain speedy approval of a concession from the Prussian government and access to the North German and national markets. Another Munich Re director, Paul von der Nahmer (1858- 1921), joined the board of directors of Allianz in 1894, thus intensifying the union between the two companies and providing Allianz with excellent banking connections and the benefits of von der Nahmer's international experience. He became sole chairman of the board of directors in 1904. The choice of the Reich eagle as Allianz's logo, with the Munich Kindl and the Berlin Bear in the left and right bottom corners, pointed to the original and new location of the enterprise, although the specificity of these particularist elements was eliminated in 1923 when the logo was transformed to reflect at once the unity and the multiplicity of an expanded company. The new logo showed a single mother eagle encompassing three smaller eagles, and while the contours of the logo were to become “softer” and more appealing by the mid-1970s, the basic symbolism was retained after 1923.

Initially concentrating on accident and transport insurance, particularly of valuables and gold, Allianz rapidly expanded its fields of endeavour. It pioneered machine insurance, took up break-in and theft insurance, and entered the liability insurance field. By the end of the 1890s, Allianz was also engaged in a considerable amount of foreign business - primarily in France, but also in Switzerland and Belgium, whose large banks took their insurance from Allianz. At the same time, Allianz participated in a variety of risk-sharing agreements with other direct insurers and also further developed its reinsurance activities. This was accompanied by the onset of what was to be a long history of expansion through the acquisition of other companies which either could no longer afford to stay in operation or found it advantageous to come under Allianz's wings.

In 1905, for example, it took over Fides Insurance Company, which had pioneered break-in insurance. In the same year, the Allianz entered the fire insurance field just in time to sustain 300,000 marks in losses in the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, which was a small amount compared to the losses of 46 million marks suffered by German insurers as a whole and of more than 14 million marks lost by Munich Re. The San Francisco earthquake was an important test of the strength of ...