In 2006, the Allianz Group in Austria focused its efforts on the market for retirement provision. "We want to grow steadily and have found the way to do so," says Chairman of the Board Wolfram Littich. The driving force behind this growth was the demand for life insurance. In this market, Allianz has increased its premium volume including savings portions by 10.8 percent to 383.2 million euros, putting it way ahead of its competitors on the Austrian market. In fact, Allianz has increased its market share in life insurance by 12 percent to 5.8 percent.

Total premium income has gone up by 2.0 percent to over 1.3 billion euros, due also to an increase in health insurance premiums. They grew by 5.5 percent to 37 million euros, while as forecast the softening market for property and casualty insurance saw a slight decrease of 1.6 percent to 889.4 million euros.

Despite the highest payouts for snow load damage in its history, Allianz Elementar fared well in 2006.Total benefits paid to customers rose by 6.7 percent to 903.6 million euros. The consequence, as announced, was an underwriting result of 42.2 (2005: 61.2) million euros and a combined ratio of 98.3 (2005: 96.6) percent. This development was stable considering the above-average benefits paid, and was made possible by prudent risk management and reinsurance schemes.

For the second time in a row, the Allianz Group in Austria had excellent investment performance and increased its capital investments by 7.2 percent to 5.2 billion euros in 2006.

The result for usual business activity and the profit for the year almost doubled, to 333.2 million euros and 251.5 million euros respectively.

"We had extremely good earnings in 2006 and strengthened our company, thus benefiting everyone, our shareholders, our employees, and above all our customers," explains the CEO.

Investing in the future pays off: the customer service concept developed in Austria has been a success and is now being introduced at other Allianz companies. "The Allianz Group is being restructured according to the Austrian model," says Littich.

This is not the only thing that puts Allianz in Austria in a stronger position as 2007 rolls on: even after a dividend disbursement, its equity capital rose by 72.1 million euros.

In 2007, the company has so far paid out benefits to the tune of 25 million euros to policyholders for damage caused by hurricanes Cyril and Olli. This is, however, well covered by reinsurance schemes.

Allianz's key objective for this year is to use attractive offers to turn more of its customers, just over 1.1 million in total, into regular customers. To do this, it will be employing 500 new sales staff between now and 2009.

In life insurance, Allianz is aiming for growth of eight percent this year. The underwriting result and combined ratio look likely to improve slightly.

Allianz in Austria is calling on the new government in Vienna to introduce two specific changes. "We are calling for an expansion of state-aided provision for the future and for workers to be given the right to convert more of their remuneration into pension contributions," says Allianz board member Manfred Baumgartl. Currently, workers in Austria can convert only 300 euros per worker per year using this tax-advantaged solution.


As with all content published on this site, these statements are subject to our Forward-Looking Statement disclaimer, provided on the right.