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Zurich Municipal this week celebrates its 10th anniversary, crowning a decade as the leading insurance and risk management organisation serving the public sector.
The event is made even more poignant as it comes in the same month, and a hundred years after, the formation of Zurich Municipal's forebear company, Municipal Mutual Insurance (MMI).
In 1903, the year that Britain had speed limits of 20 miles per hour and an official enquiry investigated London traffic congestion, a group of councils set up a municipal company through which local authorities could insure public property against fire. Ironically, their first office, in the basement of Shoreditch Town Hall, was destroyed in a fire the following year. The damage amounted to £26,000.
By December 1904 the company had 37 customers and in 1910 it was so successful it extended its insurance cover beyond property.
Today, Zurich Municipal handles more than 100,000 claims every year, looking after local authorities, the Health Service, charities and voluntary bodies, social housing associations and education establishments. The company, whose employees combined have more years of service and more specialist experience than any other insurer in the public sector, tailors a full range of products and services, and through a direct dealing philosophy has close relationships with its customers.
Zurich Municipal's partnership approach expands to other industry bodies including SOLACE (the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers), NHF (National Housing Federation), the Association of Colleges, the HFMA (Healthcare Financial Managers Association), the LGA (the Local Government Association) and ALARM (the Association of Local Authority Risk Managers). This ensures that issues are debated from different perspectives and support can be targeted at the correct levels. Zurich Municipal also sponsors several awards and conferences through the year.
Zurich Municipal Managing Director, Guy Munnoch, said: "Celebrating our tenth anniversary and centenary in the same year is an important landmark for Zurich Municipal. Our long heritage in the public sector allows us to understand the hurdles our customers face, and means we can tailor our services to provide real solutions.
"We are not just sympathetic to these problems; through our historical roots, we have first-hand experience of them."
1903 - That was the year that…
- A speed limit of 20 miles per hour was set for motor cars.
- The Board of Trade launched an official enquiry into traffic congestion in London.
- The first motor taxis appeared in London.
- Parliament considered the regulation of motor vehicles. Cars were registered and numbered. Proposals for driving tests and vehicle inspection for drink driving penalties were rejected by the Government.
- The novelist Evelyn Waugh was born and the painter James Whistler died.
- The building of Liverpool Cathedral started.
- Henry Ford founded the Ford Motor Company.
- The film The Great Train Robbery was the longest to date. It lasted 12 minutes.
- Orville and Wilbur Wright successfully flew a powered airplane.
- Manchester and Liverpool universities were founded.
- The Bolshevik Party in Russia was formed, led by Lenin and Trotsky.
- The first teddy bears were designed, named after the American President Theodore Roosevelt.
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The Zurich Financial Services Group is an insurance-based financial services provider that focuses its activities on its key markets of North America, the United Kingdom and Continental Europe. Founded in 1872, Zurich is headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland. It has offices in approximately 60 countries and employs well over 70,000 people. | 