Demutualisation, crisis and reinvention

The conversion of 1997

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 it entered into a partnership with the Union Bank of Switzerland (Bankgesellschaft), which took a stake of 25 per cent. The acquisition of the Lausanne insurer La Suisse had come earlier, in 1988.¹ Growth on this scale required capital that a cooperative could raise only with difficulty. In 1997, under its chief executive Manfred Zobl, the Rentenanstalt converted from a cooperative into a company limited by shares after 140 years as a mutual.² German Wikipedia states that about 600,000 members became shareholders. The shares were included in the Swiss Market Index in 1998.

The demutualisation was the most important constitutional event in the company's history since the separation from the Kreditanstalt. It turned policyholders who had been members into shareholders and customers, two roles that had been united in the cooperative. It gave the company access to the capital market for acquisitions and new share issues. It also placed the management under the discipline, and the pressure, of the stock market. The conversion followed a wider trend in the insurance industry of the 1990s, in which mutual insurers in several countries sought the flexibility of the joint-stock form.

Expansion and the crisis of 2002

The years after the listing were marked by rapid expansion. In 1999 the partnership with the bank ended when UBS, as the merged bank was now called, sold its stake for competitive reasons. The Rentenanstalt made the Zürcher Kantonalbank its new banking partner and bought Banca del Gottardo in Lugano for 2.4 billion francs, the French health insurer Lloyd Continental for 810 million francs, the real estate company Uto Albis and the consultancy STG. By 2000 the group had become one of the largest life insurers in Europe and the fourth-largest asset manager in Switzerland, with more than 12,500 employees. Its gross premiums reached 19.3 billion francs, and it reported a profit of 924 million francs, up from 107 million in 1999. The HLS observes that this aggressive expansion almost brought the company to collapse in 2001 and 2002.

The crisis unfolded in the course of 2002. On 31 January the company issued a profit warning and announced a drastic cost-cutting programme. On 27 February Manfred Zobl was replaced as chief executive by Roland Chlapowski. In April the company reported a fall in profit of almost ninety per cent for 2001 and announced 800 job cuts, while the Swiss exchange reprimanded it for breaches of the listing rules. In September it announced a capital increase of 0.9 to 1.2 billion francs, a refocusing on life insurance, a further 700 job cuts and the sale of subsidiaries. In October further accounting errors came to light, and the Federal Office of Private Insurance opened an investigation.³ The share price had lost about seventy-eight per cent of its value since the beginning of the year when the capital increase was announced, and the equity of the group had shrunk by more than a third in 2001.⁴

The event that turned a financial crisis into a crisis of confidence was the disclosure, at the end of October 2002, of a secret investment vehicle called Long Term Strategy (LTS). Six managers, including Chlapowski, had received 11.5 million francs from it against a capital contribution of 3.8 million. Federal Councillor Pascal Couchepin publicly criticised the avarice of the management. In early November Rolf Dörig, a manager from Credit Suisse Group, replaced Chlapowski, and the chairman of the board, Andres F. Leuenberger, announced his resignation. A criminal investigation for breach of trust and false statements followed. In December the capital increase raised 856 million francs, and the board announced that Bruno Gehrig, vice-chairman of the Swiss National Bank, would become chairman in 2003. In March 2003 the company reported a record loss of 1.7 billion francs for 2002. All but two members of the board resigned.

The LTS affair and the “Rentenklau” debate reinforced each other. A company that had been a mutual owned by its policyholders for 140 years was seen, within five years of its conversion, to have allowed its managers to enrich themselves while it pressed for lower guaranteed returns for the insured. The damage to the reputation of the Rentenanstalt was considerable, and it contributed directly to the political climate in which the minimum distribution ratio was introduced. For the financial centre, the crisis of 2002 was one of several governance failures of the period that led to stricter rules on corporate governance and executive remuneration in listed Swiss companies.

Swiss Life: refocusing on life and pensions

The recovery under Rolf Dörig and his successors rested on a return to the core business. The group adopted the brand Swiss Life, first for most of its operations in 2002, and in 2004 the name Schweizerische Rentenanstalt disappeared entirely in favour of a simplified brand structure and a modern corporate design. The anniversary magazine of 2007 notes the change after 140 years as a cooperative. The company stopped making acquisitions outside its core business and began to sell the units that no longer fitted its strategy.

The most important of these disposals was Banca del Gottardo. On 7 November 2007 Swiss Life announced the sale of the bank to BSI in Lugano, a subsidiary of the Italian Generali group, for 1.775 billion francs plus a dividend of 100 million francs. Swiss Life stated that it was not the best owner for the next stage of the bank's development and intended to focus its investments on the life and pensions business. It expected the sale to contribute around 600 million francs to its profit after tax in the first half of 2008.⁵ The end of the Allfinanz experiment was thereby complete. The private bank that the Rentenanstalt had bought in 1999 for 2.4 billion francs passed into the Ticino banking sector under Italian ownership.

The proceeds were used for a different kind of expansion. On 14 January 2008 Swiss Life published a voluntary public takeover offer for AWD Holding AG in Hanover at 30 euros per share. AWD, founded in 1988 by Carsten Maschmeyer, described itself as the leading independent financial services provider in Europe, with 1.9 million private clients in the middle and upper-income segments in ten countries and more than 6,300 financial advisers. Swiss Life already held about 46 per cent of the shares together with the Maschmeyer family.⁶ By March 2008 Swiss Life held 86.2 per cent of AWD. The acquisition gave the insurer a large distribution network in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. It also brought difficulties. German Wikipedia records a write-off of about 600 million francs of AWD goodwill in 2012, and in 2013 the network was renamed Swiss Life Select.

Swiss Life in 2025

The Swiss Life group of today is a life insurer, a pension provider, an asset manager and a distributor of financial products. For the 2025 financial year it reported an operating profit of 1.83 billion francs, a net profit of 1.26 billion francs and gross premiums of 20.9 billion francs. The fee result, which measures the earnings from asset management, distribution and other commission business, reached 858 million francs. Third-party assets under management amounted to 146 billion francs after net new money of 17.7 billion francs. The Swiss Solvency Test ratio stood at about 210 per cent. The board proposed a dividend of 36.50 francs per share, and a share buyback of 750 million francs was running until May 2026. The group employed about 11,000 people and worked with about 17,000 advisers, among them those of Swiss Life Select, Tecis, Horbach, Proventus and Chase de Vere.⁷

The group is led by Matthias Aellig as chief executive. Its current programme, “Swiss Life 2027”, aims at a fee result of more than one billion francs and a return on equity of 17 to 19 per cent, compared with 17.2 per cent in 2025.⁸ The emphasis on fee income marks the distance that the company has travelled from the Rentenanstalt of the nineteenth century. Widmer's institution earned its living from the difference between cautious premiums and actual experience. Its successor aims to earn a growing share of its profit from services for which no balance-sheet guarantee is needed, while remaining the country's leading provider of guaranteed life and pension products.

Notes

1. HLS, Fabienne Taric Zumsteg, “La Suisse Versicherungen”, version of 2006, edited 01.07.2025, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/041784: “1988 traten die La Suisse Versicherungen der Gruppe der Rentenanstalt bei (ab 2002 Swiss Life).” Also cash.ch, “Bedeutende Übernahmen im Schweizer Versicherungsmarkt”, 22 April 2025, https://www.cash.ch/news/top-news/bedeutende-ubernahmen-im-schweizer-versicherungsmarkt-816858: “1988 wurde die La Suisse von der Rentenanstalt übernommen.” ↩
2. swissinfo.ch, “Stichwort: Rentenanstalt/Swiss Life”, 2002, https://www.swissinfo.ch/ger/finanzplatz-schweiz/stichwort-rentenanstalt-swiss-life/2569744. The article records the conversion from a cooperative into a joint-stock company in 1997 after 140 years, the Allfinanz strategy, the partnership with the Bankgesellschaft from 1995 and its end in 1999, the acquisitions of 1999 with their prices and the figures for 2000. ↩
3. swissinfo.ch, “Krisen-Chronik Swiss Life/Rentenanstalt”, 2003, https://www.swissinfo.ch/ger/archive-finanzplatz-schweiz/krisen-chronik-swiss-life-rentenanstalt/3254812. The chronology records the events from the profit warning of 31 January 2002 to the regulatory findings on the LTS affair of 7 April 2003, including the payments of CHF 11.5 million to six managers, the change of chief executive to Rolf Dörig, the capital increase of CHF 856 million and the record loss of CHF 1.7 billion for 2002. ↩
4. swissinfo.ch, “Rentenanstalt: Mehr Eigenmittel”, 16 September 2002, https://www.swissinfo.ch/ger/finanzplatz-schweiz/rentenanstalt-mehr-eigenmittel/2930968. The report gives the size of the planned capital increase, the fall of the share price by about 78 per cent in 2002, the shrinkage of equity in 2001 and the workforce of 12,000, of whom 3,000 were in Switzerland. ↩
5. Swiss Life Group, “Swiss Life to sell Banca del Gottardo to BSI”, media release of 7 November 2007, https://www.swisslife.com/en/home/media/media-releases/news-archiv/20071107.html. The release gives the price, the buyer, the rationale and the expected contribution to profit. ↩
6. Swiss Life Group, “Swiss Life veröffentlicht freiwilliges Übernahmeangebot für AWD Holding AG”, media release of 14 January 2008, https://www.swisslife.com/de/home/medien/medienmitteilungen/news-archiv/20080114.html. The release gives the offer price, the acceptance period, the description of AWD and the joint holding of about 46 per cent. ↩
7. Swiss Life Group, “Swiss Life setzt Wachstum fort, steigert Betriebsgewinn und erhöht Dividende – «Swiss Life 2027» gut auf Kurs”, media release of 12 March 2026, https://www.swisslife.com/de/home/medien/medienmitteilungen/newsfeed-eqs/adhoc/2026/20260312_0600.html. The release gives the figures for 2025 cited in the text, the name of the chief executive and the advisory networks. ↩
8. finews.ch, “Swiss Life macht Punktlandung und erhöht Dividende”, 12 March 2026, https://www.finews.ch/news/versicherungen/71511-swisslife-ergebnis2025-insurance-betriebsgewinn-reingewinn-versicherung-finanzplatz-schweiz-matthias-aellig-groupceo-zuerich-zurich. The report gives the return on equity for 2025 and the targets of the “Swiss Life 2027” programme. ↩

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.