The confi guration of the segments changed substantially in the year under review in comparison with the previous year. The organization, which had become highly complex as a consequence of several intermediate holding companies and operating/sales companies, had to be put on a competi-tive footing for the future in order to ensure that growth and profi tability targets could be successfully accomplished.
Functions which had previously been performed in multiple parts of the Group are now being concentrated with the clear goal of working more effi ciently.
Primary insurance – previously split into the Property/Casu-alty Primary Insurance and Life Primary Insurance segments – was therefore split into three divisions oriented towards customer segments that span the various lines of business:
Industrial Lines, Retail Germany and Retail International. One member of the Talanx Board of Management takes responsi-bility for each of these divisions.
Industrial Lines will be the platform for a Global Player that is present and able to act worldwide on the basis of its own resources: as independent as possible from third parties and equipped with the capability to lead international consortia.
Such a player must be in a position to leverage economies of scale in portfolios and it must have suffi cient fi nancial resources to make substantial insurance capacities available on a sustained basis.
The German companies transacting business with private and commercial customers are interlinked in the Retail Ger-many segment. The traditional line-of-business distinctions between life insurance and property/casualty insurance are being eliminated in order to become even more attractive to policyholders through comprehensive customer manage-ment: processes will be optimized, and the brand and prod-uct strategy will be tailored more closely to customer needs.
Group segments Assicurazioni S. p. A.
(Italy)
The Retail International segment is charged with growing in the strategic target markets of Central and Eastern Europe as well as Latin America both through its own eff orts and by way of acquisitions; it is also tasked with optimizing activities in existing markets and cultivating new markets. Despite the diff erences in the various target markets, experience, prac-tices and products can be transferred to other markets. This division will thus evolve into a source of know-how that will fi nd it easier to expand its business or enter lucrative new markets.
The Reinsurance segment, led by Hannover Re, remains unchanged.
The Corporate Operations segment has been enlarged through the addition of two companies: the service com-pany Talanx Service AG and the IT service provider Talanx Systeme AG, which is to commence operational activities in the course of 2011. As before, the segment also includes the Financial Services sector, which along with the Group’s own internal reinsurance broker Protection Reinsurance Inter-mediaries consists primarily of the asset management com-panies. Talanx AG, which is also assigned to this segment, is extending its function from that of a pure fi nancial holding company to a fi nancial and management holding company as part of the restructuring. Going forward, then, the Group will be steered more centrally from Talanx AG. The latter will continue to perform its previous strategic tasks, but will also exert a greater infl uence on the positioning and performance of the divisions in order to ensure adherence to the overall strategy.
The Talanx Group is internationally active in primary insur-ance (with the exception of the health and credit lines) and reinsurance business. In its domestic market our Group is a major player in shaping the insurance industry. At Talanx, we optimize the interplay of insurance and reinsurance as an integral component of our business model with the aim of consistently enhancing the opportunity/risk profi le, increasing capital effi ciency and leveraging growth and profi t opportunities more fl exibly. What is more, this composition of the Group portfolio ensures that even in diffi cult market phases our Group has at its disposal suffi cient independent risk capacities to support its clients reliably and over the long term, tap into interesting markets and thereby safeguard and enhance the independence and underlying value of the Group for investors and employees on a lasting basis.
The Group is headed by Talanx AG as a fi nancial and manage-ment holding company. Its primary task is to lead and steer the Group. In its management of the Group, Talanx AG relies on the organizational principle of centralized Group steering functions and concentrated Group service functions, on the one hand, combined with local profi t responsibility on the part of the divisions, on the other. The success enjoyed by the Talanx Group is attributable in special measure to this orga-nizational structure, which accords the individual divisions a very high level of entrepreneurial freedom and profi t respon-sibility. In this way the various units are best able to act on their growth and profi t opportunities.
While the Talanx brand – as the name given to the fi nancial and management holding company, the service companies and the management companies of individual divisions – is oriented exclusively towards the capital market, on the oper-ating side our considerable international product expertise, our forward-looking underwriting policy and our distribution resources are refl ected in a multi-brand strategy. This enables us to optimally align ourselves with the needs of diff erent customer groups, regions and cooperation partners. Further-more, it promotes the effi cient integration of new companies and/or business sectors into the Group. Not only that, this structure facilitates a highly developed capacity for coopera-tion which can be harmonized with a diverse range of part-ners and business models.
A crucial factor in the success of our multi-brand strategy is the optimal support that it is given through lean, effi cient and standardized business processes combined with a state-of-the-art and – as far as possible – uniform IT structure.