Munich Re to spend $1.1b on primary insurance revamp

Munich Re, the world’s second-biggest reinsurer, plans to spend 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) by 2020 restructuring operations at its loss-making primary insurance unit in Germany.

The plan for Ergo’s German operations includes cutting 1,835 jobs, or about 13 percent of the Dusseldorf-based company’s workforce in Germany, according to a statement on Wednesday.

About a quarter of the industry’s almost one million jobs may be lost in Europe over the next decade, including positions in policy issuing and claims management, according to McKinsey & Co. European insurers have become vulnerable to unpredictable levels of claims as premiums stagnate and investment income dries up amid record-low interest rates.

At Ergo, most of the new money will be used to modernize computer systems. The company’s sales force and administration will also be streamlined, generating total net savings of 280 million euros by 2020, Ergo’s Chief Executive Officer Markus Riess said at a press conference in Dusseldorf. The changes will help put Ergo in a position to contribute 500 million euros a year to Munich Re’s earnings from 2021 at the latest, he said.

Riess, 49, was hired by Munich Re CEO Nikolaus von Bomhard last year with the task of improving profitability at Ergo. The company, which contributes about one third of Munich Re’s premium income, reported a net loss of 227 million euros for last year as it wrote down the value of its German life insurance business.

German life insurers are being challenged by low interest rates because their offerings have traditionally featured guaranteed returns that were as high as 4 percent for policies sold in the second half of the 1990s. As a life-insurance contract can run for 30 years or more, it’s difficult to meet these obligations with German 10-year government bonds paying less than 0.2 percent. The average interest guarantee of German life insurers was 2.59 percent last year, according to Cologne-based insurance ratings firm Assekurata.