Zurich Financial Services AG, the insurer that got more than a quarter of policy sales from the U.S. in the first nine months of this year, is adding customers at a unit acquired from American International Group Inc.
Zurich, based in the Swiss city of the same name, bought bailed-out AIG’s U.S. auto-insurance business last year to gain Internet sales. The unit, 21st Century Insurance Co., competes with Warren Buffett’s Geico Corp. and Progressive Corp. in making sales directly to clients, rather than through a broker.
“We’re starting to see very good growth, both from a new- business perspective and the ability to retain customers,” Jeff Dailey, president of personal lines at Farmers Group Inc., a Zurich subsidiary that runs 21st Century, said in an interview on Dec. 17. “We’ve really returned the growth and retention numbers back to where they were before AIG ran into its problems, and actually up a little bit from that.”
Direct sales are becoming a bigger part of the U.S. auto- insurance market. Progressive increased Internet and phone sales as some customers shunned using agents in a U.S. insurance market that has been in decline for most of the past three years. Geico increased its market share in 2009, the last year of available data, according to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.
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