Fredrik Rosencrantz, CEO Global Corporate for Europe at Zurich Insurance Group (Zurich), has spent his entire career in insurance. In 1998, the division he worked for was sold to Zurich and by 2001 he was promoted to CEO for the Nordic operations. In 2011, he was given the chance to take over the European corporate customer division, which was expanded to encompass the Middle East and Africa region in January 2014.
One major competitive advantage of Zurich is the companys global presence. Today, we are running around 6,000 international programs, which I think is market leading. We offer global capabilities in core skills like claims and underwriting in more than 200 countries and territories. We have a large global community, which is a great thing, and really provides our customers with local services wherever they operate around the world. That offers great value not only to our customers, but to ourselves, because we get new risk input from our own people knowing the local conditions and being out there.
Understanding local conditions with support from a global network means Zurich can respond quickly to customers needs. In 2011, many of our customers were blindsided by the various natural disasters that happened that year including the tsunami in Japan and the floods in Thailand and Australia. These are areas where much of todays investment is being done, so theres a massive value concentration down there for our customers.