The story
Founding of the predecessors from 1858
In 1858, Helvetia was established by Eastern Swiss business people and entrepreneurs as Allgemeine Versicherungs-Gesellschaft Helvetia in St. Gallen. It was the first company in Switzerland to offer an insurance against risks of transport by land, river, and sea. Three years later, the private insurance company Helvetia Feuer was established in St Gallen. The occasion was the fire of Glarus, which revealed shortcomings in the building insurance system. Until 1887, both companies were jointly managed. The independent cooperative Helvetia Unfall was founded in 1894.
Expansion from 1862
Over the course of its history, Helvetia expanded into all five continents and thereby laid the foundation for its business activities outside of Switzerland. In 1862, Helvetia Feuer established its first branches in Germany and expanded from 1876 into the US, where it opened branches in California and New York. Between 1920 and 1962, additional Helvetia subsidiaries were set up in France, Italy, Greece (sold in 1997), the Netherlands (sold in 1995) and Canada (sold in 1999). In Austria, the history of Helvetia goes back to the establishment of Der Anker, Gesellschaft von Lebens- und Rentenversicherung in 1858. Until 2006, Helvetia Austria also operated under this name. The establishment of subsidiaries in Spain, Italy and Germany took place between 1986 and 1988.
Corporate consolidation in the second half of the 20th century
In the years after 1945, the goal of all major Swiss insurers was to become an all-sector company. In this context, Helvetia Transport became a subsidiary of Helvetia Feuer in 1961, and the merger followed in 1974. In 1968, Helvetia Unfall and Helvetia Leben merged and the insurance group has been offering the entire product range of life and non-life insurance since then.
In this constellation, it was not possible for Helvetia Feuer to enter the field of accident liability and automotive insurance, as this was operated by Helvetia Unfall. The same applied in reverse for Helvetia Unfall with its subsidiary Helvetia Leben. Helvetia Feuer and Helvetia Unfall hindered each other "with their common name and saw their freedom of movement restricted in view of the transition to an all-sector society". An agreement between Helvetia Feuer and Helvetia Unfall followed. Closer cooperation was sought, but the independence of both partner companies was preserved. As a result, Helvetia Feuer cooperated with Helvetia Unfall between 1968 and 1988 by creating dual shares.
In 1986, Helvetia Feuer and Helvetia Unfall started to separate from their partnership. On 11 October 1988, the shareholders decided in an extraordinary general meeting of Helvetia Feuer and Helvetia Unfall to completely separate the two partner companies. Helvetia Feuer was renamed as Helvetia Versicherungen and the company received a new mission statement and branding. The three-dimensional triangular symbol was introduced. Helvetia Unfall took the name of its travel insurance subsidiary Elvia (now part of Allianz Global Assistance). One year later, Helvetia Insurance in Switzerland branched out to include the accident, liability and motor vehicle sectors.
Helvetia and Patria
In 1991, Erich Walser was appointed as general director of the group. Among other things, he was hired to implement a new strategy that enabled the development from a non-life insurer to an all-line insurance group. In 1996, the company cooperated with the long-standing Basel-based life insurer Patria. The beginnings of Patria go back to the establishment of Basler Sterbe- und Alters-Kasse in 1878. The charitable pension fund was the first to insure the life of socially disadvantaged people with the aim of being an actual national insurer. After numerous changes in name and mergers, Schweizerische Lebensversicherungsgesellschaft Patria was established in 1910. In 1992, Helvetia and Patria decided to develop the Swiss market jointly in the future and enter into a strategic alliance; joint management began in 1994. In June 1996, the companies have been merged and established as Helvetia Patria.
Market consolidation in the 1990s
The aim of the new company structure established in 1996 was to strengthen the market positions in the core countries of Switzerland, Germany and Austria as well as in the two southern European markets of Italy and Spain. Alte Leipziger, for example, took a 10% stake in Helvetia Patria's share capital. Through its cooperation with Alte Leipziger, Helvetia Patria transacted business in the areas of health insurance, legal protection insurance and building society savings with companies in the Alte Leipziger Group in Germany. In 2001, Alte Leipziger sold its shares again. As a result, the Swiss Association of Raiffeisenbanken became a new shareholder in the Helvetia Patria Group with a two percent share. The cooperation with the Raiffeisen group was subsequently expanded.
In Austria, Der Anker, Gesellschaft von Lebens- und Rentenversicherung became a wholly owned subsidiary in 1993. In Italy, Helvetia Patria took over Nordstern Danni in 1998 and acquired Norwich Union Vita in 2001. In 2005, the group bought the insurance portfolio of Sofid Vita and three years later they acquired Padana Assicurazioni and the majority of Chiara Vita. In Spain, at the end of 1998, Helvetia Patria acquired the northern Spanish La Vasco Navarra LVN, a medium-sized all-sector company. In 2000, the takeover of Previsión Española was completed. In 2003, the two companies merged into Helvetia Previsión, based in Seville. The position in the transport insurance area was expanded through the purchase of the transport insurance area of the cooperation partner Royal & Sun Alliance in 2002 and further acquisitions. Helvetia Patria withdrew completely from the Netherlands, Greece and Canada by 2000.
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Acquisition, internationalization and diversification
Since 2006, the corporate group has appeared under the Helvetia brand in all countries. In 2010, Helvetia bought the Swiss insurers Alba Allgemeine Versicherungs-Gesellschaft AG (Alba) and Phenix Lebensversicherungsgesellschaft AG (Phenix). The Alba/Phenix range in sickness/accident insurance was sold to the two insurance companies Innova and Solida.
In 2014, Nationale Suisse and Austria's subsidiary of Bâloise were taken over. For this acquisition, Helvetia increased its stake in Nationale Suisse to more than 98 per cent and then initiated the procedure to declare the remaining shares void. Nationale Suisse consisted of smile.direct, Switzerland's leading online insurer. It also became part of Helvetia Group with the takeover. The acquisition was one of the biggest insurance takeover in recent years in Switzerland.
In 2016, Helvetia took over 70 per cent of the shares in the online mortgage broker MoneyPark. The purchase price was about 107 million francs. With this majority stake, Helvetia entered the Swiss mortgage business.
At the beginning of 2017, the company announced that it would invest in startups, which support the transformation of the existing core business or develop new business models, via their own venture fund. The fund is endowed with some CHF 55 million and plans to invest in some 25 new companies. Among other things, the venture fund has invested in Volocopter, Flatfox, Pricehubble, Baufi24.de or in the Insurtech Inzmo.
Recent developments
With the takeover of Caser in 2020, the group entered the health & care sector, as Caser operated six hospitals and around 24 dental clinics as well as retirement and nursing homes in addition to the insurance business. In the same year, the company founded Helvetia Asset Management AG, through which it sold services and investments in the real estate sector. The company's first real estate fund was set up in April 2020. Further capital increases followed, as a result of which the fund had 47 properties with a market value of around CHF 1.09 billion as of 1 April 2023.
In 2022, Helvetia Group entered into a partnership with Migros Bank for the sale of car insurance. Via the subsidiary Medicall AG, Helvetia Group coordinates the evacuation of accidents and the towing of the Canton Basel-Landschaft. Since March 2022, Helvetia Liechtenstein has been operating under the name Helvetia Global Solutions (HGS). At the end of 2022, Helvetia Group started the internationalization of the online insurer Smile and introduced it to the Austrian market, followed by the introduction to the Spanish market in 2023.
Merger
In April 2025, Helvetia and Baloise announced a plan to merge to create Switzerland's second-largest insurance group with a combined business volume of 20 billion Swiss francs ($24.69 billion). The new group would be called Helvetia Baloise Holding. The merger is expected to conclude in the fourth quarter of 2025.
From Wikipedia’s article on Helvetia Insurance, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5