Proclaiming that "the future has begun" and Allianz is now "equipped to compete," Allianz's Chief Operating Officer Christof Mascher introduced the new operating model and its implementation stages. For customers, representatives and brokers alike, the new operating model will be more customer-focused and will combine a high degree of availability with extensive specialist competence, commitment, and fast throughput times, said Mascher.

Ulrich Schumacher, member of the management board responsible for HR, emphasized the importance of continued training and flexibility. "We further the development of our employees by means of targeted measures to train and qualify them, and we support them when changes take place locally. This ensures that jobs in Germany are future-proof," he said. So far, he continued, amicable severance arrangements have been reached with staff for over 4,400 full-time job equivalents, which equates to almost 80 percent of the jobs to be reduced.

The reorganization of its insurance business in Germany enables Allianz to focus to an even greater extent on its customers and their needs: as well as improving its customer service, the company will be developing tailor-made, cross-divisional products for specific customer groups and circumstances.

This will be greatly facilitated by newly integrated processes and IT services, which will also help customers to feel they are dealing with one and the same company, whatever service they require. To achieve this, operations that were previously carried out manually will be replaced by fast, efficient and competent online processing. In the future, telephone operatives will be able to directly resolve 80 percent of requests.

Two service facilities of key importance in the new structure are the Call Center in Leipzig and the Incoming Mail Center in Berlin. The Call Center will take all calls for the two northern service regions, while the Mail Center will scan all incoming Allianz insurance mail and distribute it electronically directly to the appropriate customer support staff members within 24 hours. Together, the two facilities will deal with some 100,000 calls from customers, representatives and brokers and scan in up to 700,000 pages of paper every day. Both facilities were unveiled to journalists on November 22.

The implementation of the new operating model as a pilot program in the North East Service Region was completed in just six weeks from the end of September. By the end of 2008, the new model will have been implemented throughout Allianz Deutschland AG.

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