Oliver Bäte, CEO of Allianz SE
Brand trust: The increasing importance of strong, trustworthy brands
Navigating the AI-driven customer journey
In this environment, decisions in insurance carry particular weight. They are not just transactions, but long-term commitments that safeguard people’s property, health, and financial futures.
Therefore, the qualities people seek in an insurance partner become even more important: security, resilience and trust. For decades, Allianz has built its business on these foundations, supporting customers across generations and market cycles. As customer journeys continue to evolve – often blending digital interaction with local, in-person expertise – we focus on integrating technology in ways that enhance clarity and accessibility. In this way AI can help connect online and offline experiences more seamlessly, while human expertise remains central where it matters most.
As options are refined by AI into shortlists, the role of brand becomes even more visible. Customers gravitate toward names that have consistently represented reliability and trustworthiness over time – especially in insurance, where value is often proven later, in a claim or a crisis. Edelman’s 2025 brand trust findings reflect this dynamic: 80% of people say they trust the brands they use.
How the Allianz brand shows up in people’s lives
As brands take on a greater role in helping people navigate complexity and uncertainty, their presence in everyday life becomes increasingly important – and for Allianz, brand strength is not abstract, but built and tested through actions that consistently deliver security, confidence and progress for people across markets and moments.
There are four ways we do this:
1. Being a trusted partner
Trust today is not transactional. The 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer brand trust report finds that people trust the brands they use, more than institutions such as business, government, media and NGOs, especially when decisions feel complex, personal, or uncertain.
For us, this reinforces a simple truth: trust is built by fulfilling the promise made long before our service is ever needed and delivering on it when it matters most – and we have striven to do this for over 135 years.
Allianz’s own Trust Intelligence research, conducted with Edelman across ten markets, shows that trust in Allianz reached record levels in the second half of 2025, driven by a growing base of high-trust customers. Allianz now holds a Net Trust Score of 31, the highest among the tested global insurance providers. (Source: 2H 2025 Allianz Trust Intelligence, Edelman Data & Intelligence)
But that promise extends beyond individual customers. As our name suggests, Allianz stands for alliance – being a reliable partner not only for people and businesses, but for society at large. This includes how we approach emerging technologies. Allianz has publicly committed to the responsible, human-centred use of AI, setting clear principles for transparency, accountability, and human oversight. We have joined the EU AI Pact, partnered with Anthropic to advance responsible AI at scale, and embedded governance frameworks to ensure AI supports rather than replace human judgment in critical decisions.
We are consistently recognised for our reliability, resilience and long-term commitment, including our continued inclusion in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) for 2024. This reflects our sustainability performance and signals credibility that extends beyond financial results.
Our work in sustainable finance reinforces our role as a partner in inclusive economic security and long-term value creation, which has been recognized through strong financial strength ratings from S&P Global (AA), Moody's (Aa2) and A.M. Best (A+).
“Technology can improve and accelerate decisions, but it cannot absorb their consequences. That remains a human responsibility - and one we take seriously as a company people rely on in defining moments of their lives.”
2. Customer centricity at scale
Customer expectations continue to rise. Meeting them requires more than intent – it requires customer centricity to work consistently and at scale, across every interaction and over time.
At Allianz, we believe customer centricity only matters if it delivers across the full customer lifecycle. Our offerings are designed to support people before, during and after moments of risk, while also enabling a financially secure life in the future. By combining digital access with human expertise, we ensure customers are never left navigating complexity alone.
Even in an AI-enabled world, we listen to thousands of real customers continuously – not occasionally. This commitment to understanding and responding to evolving needs is reflected in our 2025 global Net Promoter Score (NPS) results, which showed that 70% of Allianz business segments perform as Loyalty Leaders, and 79% outperform their local markets, marking a new record for the Group. These results confirm that customer trust is earned repeatedly, not episodically.
“Our purpose is to secure people’s future. To do this, we must understand how people live today, across different cultures and individual needs, and deliver on our product promise far into the future. This is how we have understood our service for over 135 years, and it is reflected in results such as our latest NPS performance.”
Simone Correll, Head of Customer Experience at Allianz SE
What this means in practice is simple: wherever customers meet Allianz, they experience continuity and support.
3. Ecosystem partnerships that enable progress
We partner because many of the challenges people face today cannot be solved by a single company.
Through long-term partnerships with the Olympic and Paralympic Movements, we work to make sport – and the environments around it – safer, more inclusive and more accessible for people everywhere. These partnerships extend well beyond elite athletes. They translate into concrete safety innovations, like the Safety Sled, large-scale community programs, and initiatives such as MoveNow, which promotes physical activity and mental well-being for young people worldwide.
Our programmes like Family of Stadiums turn global partnerships into community spaces - creating places of encounter, belonging and shared experience for more than 10 million visitors worldwide. (Source: GWI & Allianz Family of Stadiums, 2024)
Beyond sport, initiatives such as the Allianz Foundation, and Humanity Insured demonstrate how we work with NGOs, governments and even industry peers to strengthen resilience in vulnerable communities. Through these partnerships, Allianz has helped provide fast, reliable protection and preparedness to help communities reduce risk before disaster strikes.
For us, partnerships are how we expand access, enable progress and make protection and prevention tangible in everyday life.
4. Brand as a growth asset
For us, brand is not a communications layer – it is a growth lever.
In 2025, Allianz was named one of the Top Risers in Interbrand’s Best Global Brands, achieving +20% brand value growth, the highest growth in the insurance category, and advancing to rank #27 globally. This growth reflects not only strong financial performance but increasing confidence in the Allianz brand as a long-term partner in an uncertain world.
In addition to its brand recognition, Allianz’s financial performance underscores tangible business strength. In 2025, Allianz achieved a record operating profit, increasing 8.4 percent to 17.4 billion euros.
This connection between brand strength and business performance is explicit.
“Brand strength doesn’t just follow performance, it enables it. When confidence in a brand grows, it creates momentum across the business. That is why we manage the Allianz brand as a strategic asset, not a communications outcome.”
Bernd Heinemann, Head of Group Strategy, Marketing and Distribution at Allianz SE
Our consistent presence among the world’s most valuable brands reinforces a simple fact: a strong brand reduces volatility, builds resilience, and creates the conditions for sustained growth – for our business and for the people who rely on us.
Why strong brands matter – and why we continue to build the Allianz brand
Technology is reshaping how decisions are made – and opening new opportunities to serve customers better. As AI becomes embedded in customer journeys, strong brands play a key role in ensuring that simplicity does not come at the expense of transparency.
For decades, trusted brands like Allianz have helped people make informed decisions in moments of uncertainty. Today, as digital systems refine and personalise options, brand strength becomes even more relevant, reinforcing trust across both automated and human interactions.
This is especially true in categories built on promises. Insurance is not simply a financial service, decisions made here influence livelihoods, retirement security and resilience for years (sometimes decades) to come.
For Allianz, brand strength means ensuring that trust remains consistent across every channel, every touchpoint and every technological advancement. Our experts continuously assess, refine and improve our offerings to meet evolving customer needs, combining human judgment with responsible AI.
As customer journeys evolve, visibility and presence – both online and offline – become even more essential. By leveraging global coherence and consistent brand presence, we live up to our name: Allianz – building alliance through openness, engagement and long-term relationships.
In a world where technology enhances how choices are shaped, the Allianz brand ensures one thing remains constant: trust that is earned, human, and enduring. That's not only why we're chosen – it's why we remain to be trusted for what matters most.
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About Allianz
The Allianz Group is one of the world’s leading insurers and asset managers with around 97 million customers* in nearly 70 countries. Allianz customers benefit from a broad range of personal and corporate insurance services, ranging from property, life and health insurance to assistance services to credit insurance and global business insurance. Allianz is one of the world’s largest investors, managing around 764 billion euros** on behalf of its insurance customers. Furthermore, our asset managers PIMCO and Allianz Global Investors manage about 2.0 trillion euros** of third-party assets. Thanks to our systematic integration of ecological and social criteria in our business processes and investment decisions, we are among the leaders in the insurance industry in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. In 2025, over 156,000 employees achieved total business volume of 186.9 billion euros and an operating profit of 17.4 billion euros for the Group.
* Customer count reflects Allianz customers in consolidated entities that are part of the customer reporting scope only.
** As of December 31, 2025.
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