Munich Re

On April 18, 1906, an earthquake and the fire that follows destroy San Francisco. Munich Re, which had reinsured a share of the local insurers, announces it will pay all claims without argument, even if that exhausts a large part of its reserves. The gesture founds its reputation. Münchener Rückversicherungs-Gesellschaft was created in 1880 in Munich by Carl von Thieme, with the backing of the insurer Allianz, at a time when large German cities were acquiring insurance companies and industrialization was producing large risks. It became one of the world's two largest reinsurers by gross premiums, with Swiss Re, ahead of Hannover Re, and remains listed on the Frankfurt stock exchange. Its headquarters are in Munich. It operates in property, life and health reinsurance, through its reinsurance brands, and in direct insurance through ERGO, its subsidiary. It has published since 1974 the NatCatSERVICE database, one of the world's references on natural catastrophe losses, which feeds the sector's statistics. It was one of the first reinsurers to build a cyber reinsurance offer. For an underwriter, Munich Re counts as first-rank capacity on large cat layers, as treaty leader, and as a sender of price signals at each renewal.