The Insurance and Reinsurance Hub — a part of the book Zurich as an International Financial Centre by Dr Alexander Ressos.
Insurance is Zurich’s second pillar. It carries as much weight as banking but attracts far less public attention. Within fifteen years of the Federal Constitution, the city became the seat of the first Swiss life insurer, of a reinsurer that would grow into one of the largest in the world and of a marine and accident insurer that later became a global multi-line group. The Kreditanstalt stood behind the first two foundations, so that banking and insurance in Zurich grew from the same capital and the same circle of founders.
Chapter I traces the Rentenanstalt of 1857, today Swiss Life, from its mutual beginnings through demutualisation to its place in occupational pensions and private wealth planning. Chapter II follows Swiss Re from the Glarus fire of 1861 and its foundation in 1863 to the global reinsurance market of today and explains the economics and law of reinsurance. Chapter III describes Zurich Insurance Group, founded in 1872, and the industrial and commercial insurance market it serves. Chapter IV presents the Swiss supervisory regime, from the Federal Act of 1885 to the Swiss Solvency Test and the revised Insurance Supervision Act in force since 2024. Chapter V links insurance to the capital market, to occupational pensions and to private client structuring through insurance-linked securities, captives and insurance wrappers.
Taken together, the five chapters show why Zurich is one of the principal insurance and reinsurance centres of the world. With Part F, the book returns to the twentieth century and to the monetary, political and moral trials that shaped the financial centre as a whole.
This part belongs to Zurich as an International Financial Centre by Dr Alexander Ressos, published here in full, section by section.
The Rentenanstalt (1857) and life insurance — overview and summary
On the General-Guisan-Quai, a few hundred metres from the point where the Bahnhofstrasse meets the lake, stands the head office of Swiss Life, the largest life insurer in Switzerland. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubLife insurance before 1857
When the federal state was created in 1848, Swiss households that wished to secure a lump sum for their dependants on death, or a life annuity for their own old age, had no domestic life insurer to… Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubThe foundation of the Rentenanstalt in 1857
Johann Conrad Widmer was born on 16 July 1818 in Altnau in the canton of Thurgau, the son of a physician. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubMutual structure, actuarial principles and surplus participation
The Rentenanstalt was conceived from the start as an institution that belonged to its insured members. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubGrowth to 1914
The Rentenanstalt looked beyond Switzerland within a decade of its foundation. The Swiss market was small, and a life insurer's security grows with the number of lives it insures, because the law of… Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubWar, inflation and the interwar period
The First World War did not touch Swiss territory, but it affected the Rentenanstalt through its policyholders and its foreign business. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubThe Swiss life insurance market
The Rentenanstalt was the first Swiss life insurer, but it did not remain alone for long. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubThe BVG era and group life business
The occupational pension business, which the Rentenanstalt had begun with the Zurich schoolteachers in 1858 and developed through the group contracts of the interwar years, became a legal obligation… Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubDemutualisation, crisis and reinvention
In the 1990s the Rentenanstalt set out to become a financial services group. It pursued a strategy of Allfinanz, the combination of insurance, banking and asset management under one roof, and in 1995… Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubLife insurance in private wealth planning
For the lawyer, the life insurance policy is also a legal instrument with distinctive effects. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubLegacy
The Rentenanstalt left the Zurich financial centre four legacies. The first is institutional. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubSwiss Re (1863) and the global reinsurance market — overview and summary
Of all the institutions that give Zurich its standing as a financial centre, the one least visible to the general public may well be the most international. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubThe Glarus fire of 1861 and the insurance gap
On the evening of 10 May 1861 a fire broke out in Glarus, the capital of the small canton of the same name, at around half past nine. A föhn storm was blowing down the Linth valley that night. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubThe foundation of the Schweizerische Rückversicherungs-Gesellschaft (1863)
The central figure in the foundation was Moritz Grossmann. Born in Galicia in 1830 as the son of a physician, educated in commerce, mathematics and languages, he had worked in the insurance business… Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubSan Francisco 1906 and the making of a global reputation
Early on the morning of 18 April 1906 an earthquake struck San Francisco. The shaking itself caused considerable damage, but the fires that followed and burned for several days did far more. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubWar, expansion and controversy (1914–1945)
The First World War cut the international insurance links that had grown during the nineteenth century. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubPost-war expansion and the one-company strategy (1946–2000)
The Second World War ended with a Europe divided and many markets closed to private reinsurers. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubThe twenty-first century: 9/11, GE Insurance Solutions and the financial crisis
The terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 produced what Swiss Re describes as the costliest insured man-made loss in the history of the industry. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubSwiss Re Institute, sigma and the group in 2025
Among the assets that Swiss Re has built in Zurich, one is intellectual. The economics department established in 1968 developed into the publisher of sigma, a series of studies on insurance markets… Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubThe economics of reinsurance
Reinsurance is often described, in Swiss Re’s own shorthand, as “insurance for insurance companies”. The formula is correct as far as it goes. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubForms of reinsurance
The practice of reinsurance distinguishes contracts along two axes. The first concerns the way in which risks are brought under the contract. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubThe law of reinsurance in Switzerland
The Swiss Federal Act on Insurance Contracts of 2 April 1908 (Versicherungsvertragsgesetz, VVG, SR 221.229.1) contains a short provision that defines the legal framework for the entire reinsurance… Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubContract practice and arbitration
Reinsurance contracts are negotiated between professionals, usually through brokers. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubCatastrophe risk, climate and modelling
Catastrophe risk is where reinsurance is indispensable. The losses from a major earthquake or hurricane can exceed the capital of all insurers in the affected region, so that only the global… Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubZurich as a reinsurance centre
Swiss Re is the anchor of a reinsurance centre that comprises many other companies. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubLegacy
The founding of Swiss Re in 1863 has left several legacies in Zurich. The first is institutional. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubZurich Insurance Group (1872) and industrial insurance — overview and summary
A visitor who walks south along the western shore of the lake from the Bürkliplatz reaches, after some ten minutes, a long neo-Baroque palace facing the water at Mythenquai 2. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubThe Versicherungs-Verein of 1872 and the turn to accident insurance
The prehistory of Zurich Insurance begins with Swiss exports. In the decades after 1848 the textile, silk and machinery manufacturers of north-eastern Switzerland shipped their goods across the Alps… Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubLiability, factories and the state: Swiss accident law from 1875 to 1918
Zurich Insurance grew up inside a legal revolution. Before the 1870s, a worker injured in a Swiss factory or on a railway could recover damages only if he proved the fault of the employer or of a… Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubAn international accident insurer, 1900–1945
The most consequential decision of the Meyer era was the entry into the United States. Zurich obtained its American licences in December 1912, when the State of New York granted authorisation. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubFrom Zurich Insurance Company to Zurich Financial Services, 1955–2000
In 1955 the company dropped the reference to accident and liability from its name and became Zurich Insurance Company, in German Zürich Versicherungs-Gesellschaft. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubCrisis and recovery, 2000–2016
The expansion of the late 1990s left Zurich exposed on several fronts at once. The integration of the Scudder and Kemper fund businesses proved difficult because the two firms had different corporate… Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubThe group in 2025 and 2026
The annual report for 2025, the latest published at the time of writing, shows Zurich at the strongest point in its history. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubInsuring industry: the lines of corporate risk
Industrial insurance is a different trade from the mass business of motor and household policies. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubGovernance, capital and group supervision
The group’s legal structure has two Swiss levels. At the top stands Zurich Insurance Group Ltd, the holding company whose shares are listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubThe commercial insurance market in Zurich
Zurich shares with Munich the distinction of being home to both a global primary insurer and a global reinsurer of the first rank. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubIndustrial insurance under the revised Insurance Contract Act
Switzerland’s Federal Act on Insurance Contracts (Versicherungsvertragsgesetz, VVG, SR 221.229.1) dates from 1908 and entered into force in 1910. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubD&O insurance and Swiss company law after 2023
The demand for D&O insurance in Switzerland follows the liability regime of the Code of Obligations. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubLegacy
The history of Zurich Insurance shows the interplay of law and business that runs through the whole of this Part. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubInsurance supervision: from the 1885 Act to the Swiss Solvency Test — overview and summary
Every insurer, reinsurer and insurance broker that does business from Zurich today works under a supervisory regime whose roots reach back to the constitutional revision of 1874. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubThe constitutional mandate of 1874 and the Act of 1885
The federal state of 1848 left commercial and trade regulation largely to the cantons. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubThe Federal Insurance Office and the first decades of supervision
The authority entrusted with the application of the Act was the Eidgenössisches Versicherungsamt, the Federal Insurance Office, which began its work in Bern in 1886. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubThe Insurance Contract Act of 1908
Supervision of undertakings and the law of the insurance contract were separate matters in Swiss legal thinking from the beginning. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubWar, inflation and security: the legislation of 1919 and 1930
The First World War and its aftermath exposed a weakness that the Act of 1885 had not addressed. Licensing and annual reporting told the supervisor whether an undertaking was solvent on paper. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubFrom the Act of 1978 to the European agreements
The Act of 1885 remained the legal basis of Swiss insurance supervision for more than ninety years, supplemented by the security statutes and by an extensive body of ordinances and administrative… Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubCrisis and reform: the Insurance Supervision Act of 2004
By the end of the 1990s Swiss insurance law consisted of five separate federal statutes: the Act of 1978, the Kautionsgesetz of 1919, the Sicherstellungsgesetz of 1930 and the two Swisslex statutes… Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubThe Swiss Solvency Test
The Swiss Solvency Test is the best-known product of the reform. Its development began before the new statute was adopted. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubFINMA and integrated supervision since 2009
The Federal Office of Private Insurance did not survive the reform decade as an independent body. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubSolvency II and the equivalence decision of 2015
The Swiss Solvency Test and the European Union’s Solvency II framework developed in parallel and influenced each other. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubThe revised Insurance Supervision Act in force since 1 January 2024
The Act of 2004 had been designed in the aftermath of a crisis and reflected the priorities of that moment: solvency, governance and the responsible actuary. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubSupervision in practice: enforcement and conduct
Solvency supervision rarely makes headlines, because its successes consist of crises that do not occur. Enforcement in the field of conduct is more visible. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubGroups, conglomerates and systemic importance
The supervision of insurance groups became a central topic after the crisis of 2001 and 2002, when it became evident that problems in foreign subsidiaries and in the holding structure could threaten… Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubSwitzerland, Solvency II and the Insurance Capital Standard compared
The Swiss Solvency Test, Solvency II and the IAIS Insurance Capital Standard (ICS) share the same starting point: a market-adjusted valuation of assets and liabilities and a capital requirement… Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubLegacy and a practitioner’s view
Looking back over 140 years, the continuity of Swiss insurance supervision is striking. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubInsurance-linked securities, captives, pensions and insurance wrappers — overview and summary
The four chapters that precede this one tell the story of three great Zurich insurance houses and of the supervisory law that grew up around them. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubFrom reinsurance to securities: the origins of catastrophe bonds
The idea that insurance risk could be sold directly to investors is older than the catastrophe bond. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubSwiss Re, the Zurich managers and the size of the market
When the asset manager GAM and Swiss Re announced a partnership for GAM’s catastrophe bond fund range in April 2025, the press release gave a figure that illustrates Swiss Re’s place in the market. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubRegulating the investment side: managers, funds and pension investors
A manager in Zurich that invests in catastrophe bonds for clients is, in Swiss law, an asset manager like any other. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubInsurance special purpose vehicles under the revised Insurance Supervision Act
For more than a quarter of a century, the special purpose vehicles through which Swiss sponsors and Swiss investors participated in the catastrophe bond market were almost all domiciled abroad. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubCaptive insurers
A captive is an insurance or reinsurance company owned by a group whose main business lies outside insurance, which it uses to insure or reinsure the risks of its own group companies. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubPensions under the BVG as institutional investors
The Swiss pension system rests on the principle of three pillars, which the Federal Constitution has contained since 1972. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubInsurance wrappers for international private clients
The insurance wrapper is the point at which the insurance industry meets the private banking tradition of Zurich and Geneva most directly. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubLegacy: the convergence of insurance and capital markets in Zurich
Each of the four channels described in this chapter has grown from its own roots and operates within its own legal framework. Taken together, they tell a single story about Zurich. Read more