The Swiss Insurance Association SIA has appointed Gunthard Niederbäumer to head its property and casualty department. He will assume his new position on 1 January 2017. Currently, Gunthard Niederbäumer is heading the Account Management department at Basler Versicherung AG; furthermore, he is responsible for the individual support of large brokers and inhouse brokers.
Zurich, 9 may 2016 – Gunthard Niederbäumer (53) has many years of experience in property and casualty insurance, risk analysis and supporting major accounts. For the last 12 years he has held various senior positions in risk engineering, engineering insurance and sales support at Basler Versicherung AG. Before joining Basler Versicherung AG, he worked for 8 years at SKS Ingenieure, Zurich, first in the areas of preventing major incidents, transport logistics and assessing environmental impacts, followed by a position as head of the department risk and security.
Gunthard Niederbäumer holds a PhD in climate sciences (focussing on climatology and hydrology) from ETH Zurich and the University of Wyoming. Moreover, he holds a Master of Science in Business Administration of the Graduate School of Business Administration Zurich and the University of Wales. As a local councillor in the town of Frick, Gunthard Niederbäumer represents the Swiss Social Democratic Party (SP). Here, he heads the departments Social Issues, Health and Age,
«I am very happy that we have found a property and casualty specialist with a long-standing leadership record in Gunthard Niederbäumer. I have no doubt that his strategic competences will be a major asset for the insurance sector, as we are facing several important challenges (from digitisation to transforming the climate and energy policies of society as a whole and of its economic sectors in particular),» said Lucius Dürr, CEO of the SIA.
Gunthard Niederbäumer will take over from Martin Wüthrich, who is retiring in early 2017.