An international accident insurer, 1900–1945

America, 1912

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. New York mattered more than any other state because the approval of its insurance commissioner carried weight with regulators across the country. The American business consisted of accident and liability insurance, produced substantial premiums from the start and demanded considerable reserves.¹ In its first year the American business already accounted for nine per cent of the group’s premium income. By 1920 the United States produced half of all gross written premiums.²

The Swiss Re history of Swiss insurance suggests that the move was made with an eye to the risk of war in Europe. It also confirms that more than half of Zurich’s premiums derived from American operations by 1920.³ The Historical Dictionary points to the product that drove this growth. Motor insurance proved particularly significant, so much so that by 1918 nearly half of premium income derived from the United States.⁴ The United States, where the automobile spread earlier and faster than anywhere in Europe, turned a Swiss accident insurer into an American motor and liability carrier within a decade. That dependence on the American market has never been reversed. It explains why Zurich still reports in US dollars, why its largest single operation is in North America and why the Farmers business, acquired eight decades later, fitted so naturally into the group.

The First World War tested the European business. Inflation between 1913 and 1918 exceeded 100 per cent and eroded the investment portfolios of insurers across the continent, while the German insurers withdrew from the Swiss market.⁵ Zurich, whose international network remained intact, used it to help prisoners of war communicate with their families. In 1915 it made its first acquisition of an entire company, the Barcelona insurer Hispania Compañía General de Seguros, which it bought at a discount because the seller was in financial difficulty. In 1917 it introduced accident insurance for soldiers and cover against accidents caused by mines and bombs.⁶

Vita, Tobler and the interwar group

The interwar years turned the company into a group. Its leading figure was August Leonhard Tobler, vice-director and then head of the company from 1918 to 1927, under whom Zurich developed into an internationally active insurance group.⁷ In 1922 Zurich founded a life insurance subsidiary, Vita Lebensversicherungs-Gesellschaft, which took over life portfolios in Germany and France whose original insurers had defaulted in the post-war inflation. The Historical Dictionary dates the diversification into life insurance to that year.⁸ In 1925 Vita introduced free medical check-ups for its policyholders, the first such service on the European continent according to the company.

In the same year of 1922 Zurich became the first foreign company to write direct accident business in the United Kingdom. A partner marketing agreement of 1925 made it the official insurer of Ford vehicles in Britain. By the end of 1926 this “Ford Scheme” produced 60,000 pounds of premium income, half of the company’s entire British business. Canada followed in 1923. Between 1924 and 1929 Tobler pursued a series of acquisitions and new foundations, among them the Lancashire and Cheshire Insurance Company in 1924, Kosmos in Vienna and Deutsche Allgemeine in Berlin in 1928, and the Zurich Fire Insurance Company of New York in 1929. In 1928 the British insurance press described Zurich as the largest purely accident insurance company in the world.⁹

The depression of the 1930s reduced premium volumes, but the company’s reserves carried it through. It replaced manual bookkeeping with Hollerith punch card machines in 1930, fifty-eight years after its foundation, and continued to buy companies abroad: Merkur in Prague in 1930, Bedford in the United Kingdom and Holmia in Sweden in 1935, the La Nation companies in France in 1938 and the American Guarantee and Liability Insurance Company of New York in 1939. In 1933 Zurich led the liability insurance of the Chicago World’s Fair.¹⁰

War and its aftermath

The Second World War destroyed the company’s business in Central and Eastern Europe. In the United States, by contrast, the American operation launched a “Safety Zone Program” in 1941 to raise safety standards in factories producing for the war effort, an early example of loss prevention offered as part of an industrial insurance relationship.¹¹ After 1945 Zurich rebuilt its German business from Düsseldorf and Frankfurt. By 1961 Frankfurt had become the administrative centre of the German operation.¹²

In France the company experienced a second version of what it had suffered in Switzerland in 1918. The nationalisation of workers’ compensation insurance in 1946 took away 74 per cent of its French gross premiums. The company’s history records that the executive chairman Robert Matthias Naef responded at a dinner at the Paris Ritz with the words “Messieurs, on continue!”, gentlemen, we carry on.¹³ Twice within thirty years, in Switzerland and in France, the state had taken over the line of business that had made the company. Each time the answer was diversification and further expansion abroad.

Notes

1. “Zurich Financial Services”, International Directory of Company Histories, via Encyclopedia.com, https://www.encyclopedia.com/books/politics-and-business-magazines/zurich-financial-services. ↩
2. Zurich Insurance Group, “History and Heritage”, entries for 1912 and 1920, https://www.zurich.com/about-us/history-and-heritage. ↩
3. Swiss Re, Geschichte der Versicherung in der Schweiz, brochure, https://www.swissre.com/dam/jcr:c24c1c66-3045-47d5-a4ca-4829f67c59dd/Markt_Broschuere_Schweiz_DE_web.pdf. ↩
4. Elena Folini, “Zürich Versicherungen”, HLS, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/041840/. ↩
5. Swiss Re, Geschichte der Versicherung in der Schweiz, brochure, https://www.swissre.com/dam/jcr:c24c1c66-3045-47d5-a4ca-4829f67c59dd/Markt_Broschuere_Schweiz_DE_web.pdf, section on the effects of the First World War. ↩
6. Zurich Insurance Group, “History and Heritage”, entries for 1914, 1915 and 1917, https://www.zurich.com/about-us/history-and-heritage. ↩
7. “Zurich Financial Services”, International Directory of Company Histories, via Encyclopedia.com, https://www.encyclopedia.com/books/politics-and-business-magazines/zurich-financial-services. ↩
8. Folini, “Zürich Versicherungen”, HLS, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/041840/. ↩
9. Zurich Insurance Group, “History and Heritage”, entries for 1922 to 1929, https://www.zurich.com/about-us/history-and-heritage. ↩
10. Zurich Insurance Group, “History and Heritage”, entries for 1930 to 1939, https://www.zurich.com/about-us/history-and-heritage. ↩
11. Zurich Insurance Group, “History and Heritage”, entries for 1941 and 1945, https://www.zurich.com/about-us/history-and-heritage. ↩
12. “Zurich Financial Services”, International Directory of Company Histories, via Encyclopedia.com, https://www.encyclopedia.com/books/politics-and-business-magazines/zurich-financial-services. ↩
13. Zurich Insurance Group, “History and Heritage”, entry for 1946, https://www.zurich.com/about-us/history-and-heritage. ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of September 2025.