Zurich Financial Services Group at a glance

Founded in 1872, the Zurich Financial Services Group is headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland. We are one of the world's leading insurance groups and one of the few to operate on a global basis. Our mission is to help our customers understand and protect themselves from risk.

With about 60,000 employees serving customers in more than 170 countries, we aspire to become the best global insurer as measured by our shareholders, customers and employees.

We help individuals, small-and medium-sized companies and global corporations around the world understand and protect themselves from risk by offering a wide range of insurance products, solutions and advisory services.

We deliver what matters when it matters through three core business segments – General Insurance, Global Life and Farmers.

General Insurance is the largest of our three segments. Across General Insurance, we leverage the strength of a globally integrated platform – one which includes underwriting, claims, product management, distribution management, risk engineering, reinsurance and customer relationship services – to make an array of risk management tools available to our customers. We continually refine our understanding of the risks our customers face and, through this practice, generate new insights that we feed back into our underwriting process. This business model maximises value and efficiency for our existing customers and gives us a strong strategic foundation for selecting new markets and acquiring new business.

Global Life offers a broad range of life insurance, investments, savings and pension propositions to individuals and companies across the world. Life Insurance is managed globally while remaining focused on local customer and distributor needs. Our strategic focus is on customer groups and three distribution channels that benefit from our global reach. Our customer groups consist of retail customers, internationally mobile expatriates, corporate customers and private banking clients. We reach the majority of our retail customers through three main distribution channels – Zurich agents, independent financial advisers/brokers and banks. Customers and distributors of Global Life products look to Zurich to deliver when it really matters, which, in the case of life insurance or pensions, could be far into the future, making the long history and financial strength of Zurich a key part of Global Life's proposition.

Farmers is our third business segment. Through Farmers we manage the personal lines and small business insurance sold in the United States by the Farmers Exchanges, which we do not own. Counting all insurance sold through the Farmers Insurance Group – which includes not only insurance sold under the Farmers brand, but also Foremost, Bristol West and 21st Century, the direct auto insurer – makes Zurich the third-largest personal lines insurer¹ in the US.

Recognition in 2011

• Zurich in top 100 global brands of 2011 (Interbrand).
• #2 most-admired company in property and casualty insurance and #102 in the Fortune Global 500 (Fortune).
• Zurich named Best Overall Commercial Insurer (National Underwriter).