What’s ailing Zurich Insurance? That question was the focus of Carrier Management’s top news story in 2015, a piece that drew enormous reader interest.
Switzerland’s largest insurer faced plenty of problems during the year. Zurich’s ailing general insurance business booked a $183 million operating loss in Q3, for example, and the insurer reported $275 million in losses from explosions at the Port of Tianjin in China. A.M. Best responded by revising its ratings outlook from stable to negative.
There are also legions of job cuts underway, and Zurich dropped a proposed acquisition of RSA Insurance, leading investors to question the insurer’s long-term strategy. Closing out 2015, Zurich agreed to buy a Wells Fargo & Co. crop-insurance business for as much as $1.05 billion in a bid to put to use some excess cash left over from its failed RSA bid.
Executives made assurances in November that Zurich could turn around its general insurance unit with a focus on profitability over growth. But Zurich CEO Martin Senn agreed in December to step down after six years on the job, based on a mutual agreement between Zenn and Zurich’s board of directors, leaving board member Tom de Swaan to become interim CEO.
Of course, there were many other stories during 2015 that drew enormous attention from Carrier Management readers. Those stories included the increasing M&A trend, Berkshire Hathaway, AIG losses and job cuts, the ACE/Chubb merger, the impact of the capital markets, hiring trends, disruption and the quest to understand millennials.
Below, we’ve listed the top 10 news stories for Carrier Management in 2015. We invite you to give them another read, and also contemplate upcoming trends as 2016 rolls around.
Carrier Management’s top 10 news stories of 2015: