Founded in 1872, the Zurich Financial Services Group is headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland. We are a leading multi-line insurance provider with a global network of subsidiaries and offices in Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa, as well as other markets. We offer a wide range of General Insurance and Life Insurance products and services for individuals, small businesses, mid-sized and large companies as well as multinational corporations.

Divided into three main segments – General Insurance, Global Life and Farmers - the Group employs about 60,000 people serving customers in more than 170 countries.

General Insurance is the largest of our three segments. Across General Insurance, we leverage the strength of a globally integrated platform – one which includes underwriting, claims, product management, distribution management, risk engineering, reinsurance and customer relationship services – to make an array of risk management tools available to our customers. We continually refine our understanding of the risks our customers face and, through this practice, generate new insights that we feed back into our underwriting process. This business model maximises value and efficiency for our existing customers and gives us a strong strategic foundation for selecting new markets and acquiring new business.

Global Life offers a broad range of life insurance, investments, savings and pension propositions to individuals and companies across the world. Life Insurance is managed globally while remaining focused on local customer and distributor needs. Our strategic focus is on customer groups and three distribution channels that benefit from our global reach. Our customer groups consist of retail customers, internationally mobile expatriates, corporate customers and private banking clients. We reach the majority of our retail customers through three main distribution channels – Zurich agents, independent financial advisers/brokers and banks. Customers and distributors of Global Life products look to Zurich to deliver when it really matters, which, in the case of life insurance or pensions, could be far into the future, making the long history and financial strength of Zurich a key part of Global Life’s proposition.

Farmers is our third business segment. Through Farmers we also manage the personal lines and small business insurance sold in the United States by the Farmers Exchanges, which we do not own. Counting all insurance sold through the Farmers Insurance Group – which includes not only insurance sold under the Farmers brand, but also Foremost, Bristol West and 21^st Century, the direct auto insurer – makes Zurich the third-largest personal lines insurer¹  in the US.

2010 performance overview
Our Group strategy is built to maintain top-tier financial results under any market conditions. In 2010 we successfully retained a clear focus on underlying profit. Our performance highlights include:

• business operating profit (BOP) of US$4.9 billion, a decrease of 13%. BOP return on equity²  after tax of 12.9%;
• net income of US$3.4 billion, a decrease of 13%. Return on equity of 11.4%;
• total Group business volumes, comprising gross written premiums, policy fees, insurance deposits and management fees, of US$67.7 billion, a decrease of 3% but unchanged on a local currency basis;
• return on Group investments through the income statement of 4.1%, up 90 basis points; and
• shareholders’ equity of US$32.0 billion, an increase of 9%. Solvency I ratio up 48 percentage points to 243%³.