Interview with Dr. Ruedi Kubat, CEO of Allianz Suisse

KUBAT In our growth strategy, we are focusing on long-term customer relationships. We want to win new customers and retain existing customers relationships with top performance. To this end, we launched the "Market Excellence" program in 2022, which aims to make Allianz Suisse more client- and market-oriented. We aim to captivate new customers with personalized advice and a compelling brand promise. We strive to build lasting relationships with our customers by offering comprehensive risk coverage, holistic advice, and an exceptional customer experience.

KUBAT Throughout the entire customer journey, we seek to inspire and engage, not just at individual touchpoints. For us, this means excellent advice, simple and intuitive processes in onboarding and claims handling, and excellent customer service. Recently we revised our advisory approach completely to provide customers with even more comprehensive advice across all areas and phases of life. Claims processing times have been further reduced. All these factors are helping us to achieve further growth.   

As Allianz Suisse, we have also focused strongly on growing profitably in recent years - a challenge in times of rising claims inflation and increasing weather risks. Our focus are profitable business areas, and we are actively withdrawing from sustainably unprofitable ones. We have also taken transformative steps that will enable us to organize ourselves even more efficiently in the base of insurance business and allow us to invest in growth.  

KUBAT Digitalization topics are very important at Allianz Suisse. A modern IT infrastructure and continuous digitalization are key to the long-term success of the company. We also take this into account in our current strategy, which includes cyber security and AI among other topics.   

KUBAT The Allianz Group has been using AI for many years, initially with advanced analyses and machine learning on structured data. The use of AI started in claims processing and has since been extended to the entire value chain. The benefits for customers and employees will soon be tangible, as AI speeds up claims processing, enhances customer service, detects accidents in real time, and improves the prediction of natural disasters. Allianz is investing heavily in AI infrastructure as well as employee training and development. Strong governance that takes security, ethics and data quality into account is essential for the responsible use of AI. Generative AI, such as our tool "AllianzGPT", is used internally at Allianz Suisse to provide answers to questions, translate and summarize documents. Allianz is committed to using AI responsibly and invests in training programs to prepare employees for the use of AI.   

KUBAT We are convinced that sustainability will remain very important in the future, which is why it is one of our strategic focus topics. Our business model is heavily affected by climate change. We want to take responsibility and consider the topic in all business decisions. 

KUBAT  Our top 3 priorities are client and employee satisfaction, profitable growth as well as maximum capital efficiency. First and foremost, we want to inspire our customers. By delivering top performance in every customer interaction and responding to their needs in the best possible way, we live our purpose "We secure your future" and focus on the holistic protection of our customers in all phases of their lives.   

The satisfaction of our employees is also of central importance to us, as they deliver top performance for our customers every day. We do everything we can to remain an attractive and innovative employer. Our efforts were rewarded this year by "Great Place to Work", which recognized us as one of the "Best Large Workplaces 2024" in Switzerland.   

Sustainable growth is another focus that we want to achieve through our expertise in sales, pricing and claims processing. For this, the greatest possible capital efficiency is essential.