Portrait

Our principles

Our members are committed to the association’s guiding principles:

• To support free market entry and competition.
• To provide quality, reliability, transparency and fair play in insurance.
• To afford security based on professional underwriting and risk management.
• To observe the Swiss Code of Best Practice and the SIX Swiss Exchange’s disclosure requirements.
• To promote progressive employer practices.

Our aims

We pursue the following aims in the name of our members:

• We undertake efforts to maintain and promote a liberal and socially acceptable market and competitive system.
• We are committed to an economically viable framework, in particular with regard to private pension provision, insurance supervision, insurance operations and accounting standards.
• We promote trust and confidence in the insurance industry by pursuing an active, integrated approach to public relations.
• We create value for our members by means of knowhow transfer, joint events and information activities.
• We provide comprehensive, specially designed training modules.
• We strive for loss prevention by adopting various measures.

Mission statement

We actively submit proposals for specific problems to influence political opinion forming. These proposals are based on broadly supported positions developed in collaboration with our members. In this way, we aim to help shape needs-based parameters and to simplify and standardise the laws and regulations that make private insurance solutions possible. Specifically, we act to ensure the inclusion and promotion of private pension provision in legislation.

We are a fair and reliable partner recognised by politicians, authorities, associations, the media and the general public. We play an active role in national and international political and private committees and organisations. The regular exchange of views and information, and if expedient the creation of alliances, with all our partners is important to us.

Our member companies ensure transparency and customer friendliness by means of easily comprehensible insurance conditions and professional advice. We highlight the benefits which the insurance industry provides to society. In doing so, we foster confidence and trust in our sector.

Our communications are open, active, expedient, understandable and transparent. We work closely with the communications offices of our member companies to ensure that we speak with one voice on issues affecting our industry. We demonstrate our competence through our self-confident approach both within the association and externally.

We support our members in those areas where it makes sense to develop joint solutions. This allows us to compile, on the basis of their know-how, technical principles such as statistics. Together we devise joint solutions, eg on issues like insurance for natural disasters and self-regulation.

By providing financial backing to loss prevention institutions and initiating our own activities we contribute to reducing bodily injury and property damage.

We ensure that there is a comprehensive range of training opportunities and courses available in order to maintain and build on standards of expertise within the industry. Our emphasis is on providing basic training for apprentices, field staff (certificates) and experts (diplomas).

Resources

The association’s activities are carried out via a combination of voluntary bodies and a full-time head office. Enterprising and competent representatives of the member companies contribute their know-how, managerial and professional experience and decide on relevant issues. Our head office acts as a centre of competence and interface to ensure the smooth functioning of the association. It maintains an early warning system, launches activities and fosters contact and relations. The association’s representation to external parties is performed jointly by the voluntary bodies and the head office. Our association is financed by contributions from our member companies.

Structure

The SIA was established as an association pursuant to Article 60ff of the Swiss Civil Code. As laid out in the Articles of Association, the General Assembly is responsible for electing the most important bodies – Chairman, Executive Board, Chairman of the Board Committee – and passing resolutions pertaining to the association’s annual accounts and budget. The Executive Board and the Board Committee exercise a function similar to that of a board of directors and board of directors committee. They formulate the association’s aims, approve its mission statement and strategy and oversee the work of the head office.

Voluntary work plays a key role in the organisation of the SIA. A substantial part of the work is performed by the association’s bodies, in other words the four committees and the permanent commissions. Our member companies send their experts to sit on these bodies, thereby ensuring that the practitioner’s view and the needs of the member companies are incorporated directly into the association’s work. It is this active commitment that makes possible a competent and efficient association for the benefit of the entire insurance industry.

The head office in Zurich is the association’s operational centre. Under the authority of the CEO, the Management Board is responsible for implementing the association’s decisions relating to management issues (Articles of Association, mission statement, planning, budget). The head office units provide technical and administrative support to the voluntary bodies.

Member companies

The SIA comprises around 75 insurance companies, some of which are members of the same group of companies. The SIA’s members account for more than 90% of the premiums earned by private insurers on the Swiss market.

Most of the member companies are legally classified as public limited companies, but there are still some traditional cooperatives to be found. The association includes not only Swiss companies in the strict economic sense, but also foreign subsidiaries and branch offices. They comprise specialised life and property & casualty insurers, reinsurers, along with insurers who write both life and property & casualty business.

The very first private insurance companies were founded way back in the 19th century. Many of these pioneering companies are still around today, such as Swiss Mobiliar (founded in 1826), Swiss Life (1857), Helvetia (1858), Bâloise (1863), Swiss Re (1863), Zurich Insurance (1872) and AXA Winterthur (1875). The “Association of Licensed Swiss Insurance Companies” was the forerunner to the SIA founded by 21 insurance companies in 1900. It comprises today 74 insurance companies.

The private insurance industry has seen enormous growth over the last 150 years, much of it in the period after the Second World War. The transformation from an agrarian state via industrialisation to a modern information society, coupled in particular with a strong rise in life expectancy, the increased capital intensity of production and an improvement in prosperity, also means that insurance needs have been constantly changing (accident insurance, marine insurance, motor liability, life, financial loss, IT insurance, etc).

Memberships

The SIA is a member of national and international associations and organizations. Representing the Swiss insurance industry and promoting the interests of its members, the SIA maintains an active dialog with the following in particular: Economiesuisse, Swiss Employer Association and the European insurance and reinsurance Federation (CEA).

Links

• Annual Report
• Our members
• Articles of Association