Zurich Insurance Group

The Zurich Insurance Group is a multi-line insurance provider that delivers a wide range of insurance products and services for individuals, small businesses, medium and large companies, including multinational corporations. It has a global network of subsidiaries and offices in more than 210 countries serving approximately 55 million customers.

It also distributes non-insurance products, such as mutual funds, mortgages and other financial services products. The company operates through the following segments: General Insurance, Global Life and Farmers. The General Insurance segment provides a variety of motor, home and commercial products and services for individuals, as well as small and large businesses. The Global life segment offers life insurance, savings, investment and pensions solutions. The Farmers segment provides, non-claims related management services.

In full the company offers vehicles and travel, home and construction, liability and legal, event, pension plans and investments, and accident and sickness insurance products for private clients; and property and liability, motor vehicles and aircraft, accident and sickness, pension plans and investments, pecuniary loss, and commercial insurance products to corporate customers, as well as reinsurance.

Founded in 1872 and headquartered in Switzerland's largest city, the group operates in five regions: North America, Latin America, Europe, Middle-East and Africa, and Asia-Pacific.

In February 2018, Zurich announced the launch of its new initiative, the UK Innovation Foundry, through which the company plans to push new innovative ideas, products and technologies. In 2018 alone, Zurich has already partnered with Laka, the UK P2P insurance startup, and launched a new AI chatbot called Zara. What's more, they have launched a life insurance quote service targeting millennials. Aptly named FaceQuote, the service can estimate a customer’s age based on a selfie, before putting together a quote based off the age they have predicted.

In the same month, Zurich acquired QBE Seguros La Buenos Aires for a total aggregate price of $409M. This deal positioned the company as Argentina's largest insurer, and significantly strengthened their operations in South America.

In their commitment to improving the customer experience, the Group launched Zurich Insurance Mobile Solutions (ZIMS), along with the Zurich Innovation World Championship, which connects the globe's most promising start-ups and entrepreneurs to foster InsurTech innovation.

During the latter half of 2018, Zurich launched a revamped cyber insurance policy, replacing its previous Security & Privacy policy. Consistent across Zurich's worldwide customer base, the new product will be sold through brokers in the UK. In the East, Zurich also became Indonesia's largest foreign P&C insurer with their acquisition of Adira Insurance in September.

In 2019, the insurer's UK subsidiary announced a major extension to its eight-year partnership with BAE Systems. From January, Zurich UK will deploy BAE Systems NetReveal Property & Casualty Fraud solution across multiple business areas, including commercial lines, to boost fraud detection, reduce illegitimate payouts and optimise the claims process. Later that year, Zurich would unveil yet another partnership - this time, with AI supply chain risk management firm risk methods to provide its European commercial customers with tech-driven services that reduce supply chain risks.

Later that same year, too, the insurer won two awards. It was awarded the Global Innovator of the Year for several innovations including its “Zurich Innovation World Championship,” - a global insurtech competition that seeks the best startups to collaborate with Zurich's business units - and the “Make the Difference” program, which empowers employees to make Zurich a better place for colleagues and customers by focusing on simplification, innovation and trust. It was also recognised for a platform powered by CoverWallet that enables businesses to assess their insurance requirements, quote and buy online, seek advice of professionals if needed, as well as store their policies and background data online in a hassle-free way. It also won the Product & Service Innovation award for “Klinc by Zurich,” - on-demand insurance for millennials in Spain that lets them control their insurance policies and directly manage them through their mobile phones.

In July 2019, Zurich announced that they were launching their new product, Doppo, in Spain. This is the first digital insurance brand available in Spain, and users can purchase coverage online, obtain certificate of insurance, tailor coverage to only insure a vehicle for a self-determined percentage, and enjoy remote video inspections via mobile phone.

Later that year, in September, Zurich announced another partnership, with insurtech Driveway. Driveway's telematics platform will be used to analyse and score driving behaviour within Zurich Brazil's driving app, Zurich Driver.

In early 2020 Zurich Spain launched Zurich Smart, a new water-damage prevention solution for small businesses. The sensor can detect water on the floor of an office building, and an additional 'smart plug', designed for use in restaurants, can respond to a loss of electricity.

In March Zurich announced it was partnering with Carpe Data, which would provide the corporate insurer with tools to improve claims efficiency and fraud protection. The pair had initially piloted Carpe Data's ClaimsX solution in 2019, and agreed to scale it across 2020.

Zurich was one of a number of travel insurers which it paused sales of its products during the Covid-19 pandemic. In July 2020 it announced it would offer free Covid-19 antibody testing for all of its employees, their partners and their children.

Zurich acquired two digital health and wellbeing service providers - Australia's HealthLogix and South Africa's HealthInsite - to bolster its LiveWell health and wellbeing business in October 2020. The two acquisitions provide customers with mobile and web-based solutions for corporate employees and retail solutions for increased productivity and engagement.

In November 2020, it was revealed Zurich was in talks to buy MetLife's US P&C unit, through its Farmers Group subsidiary.

In February 2021 it was announced that Greater Than was deepening its collaboration with Zurich through an agreement with Onto, the UK-based all-inclusive electric car subscription service. Through the collaboration, Onto and Zurich obtain predictive risk data, facilitating their joint mission to improve road safety and enable dynamic insurance solutions.

In April 2021 Zurich partnered with Singapore's BetterTradeOff (BTO) for a financial planning solution, 'Up | MyZurichLife' to help MyZurichLife's users better plan for the future. The cloud-based solution will leverage analytics and a drag-and-drop customer journey to develop a comprehensive plan that helps people understand how different scenarios, such as buying a home or paying for a child's education, could impact their financial future.

Following a pilot with Sprout.ai that began in December, Zurich has announced in April 2021 that it has managed to cut property claims settlement times to under 24-hours. Sprout, which uses NLP and Knowledge Graphs to deliver automated policy checking, is able to reach a reading speed of 10,000 words per microsecond, leading claims to be triaged and processed within just a few hours, with more than 98% accuracy.

Also in April 2021 Zurich announced it would offer a telehealth service, powered by HealthHero, for its Group Income Protection and Group Life Customers. Zurich has also launched a Second Medical Opinion service, available across the UK, enabling users to talk to specialists face-to-face, or via telephone and video consultations.

In July 2021 Buddybank, a smartphone-based bank, joined Zurich Connect to expand its in-app products, offering car and motorcycle products and implementing Open Banking.

In January 2022 Zurich agreed to sell its Italian life and pensions back book to Portuguese insurer Gamalife, in a move to enhance capital allocations. It's reported that the transaction is set to release $1.2b of capital, which will enable Zurich to improve its solvency ratio and reduce its exposure to interest rates and credit risk.

In April 2022 Zurich announced it had picked 12 startups to partner with, selected as a part of its third annual Zurich Innovation Championship. The selected startups, chosen from around 2,600 applications, explore themes of 'insurance reimagined', 'prevention and mitigation', 'simplicity' and 'sustainability', with some of the finalists offering solutions on anti-cyber bullying, reducing carbon footprints and settling insurance claims via AI.

In July 2022 LiveWell by Zurich collaborated with Polar Electro, which develops wearable sports and heart rate and health technology, to enable customers from both to gain access to services that will help them reach their wellbeing goals.

In January 2023 Zurich Resilience Solutions (ZRS) partnered with climate services provider and carbon project developer South Pole, to launch a new climate change-related offering to companies. The joint offering will be initially available in the US, Germany and Switzerland. It will help businesses tackle climate challenges by helping them define and execute their short- and long-term climate resilience objectives and net-zero goals.

In July 2023 Zurich partnered with Qover, through its innovation arm, Global Ventures investment in Qover's Series C funding  round. This partnership will assist Zurich to expand its proposition in the embedded insurance arena.