Global Giants.

The world's most prominent insurers at the turn of the 20th century had established such a foothold that 100 years later they are still among the most renowned.

An insurance professional transported back to the turn of the 20th century would find a surprisingly familiar international landscape.

Looking for marine insurance? Lloyd's of London.

Searching for reinsurance? None bigger than Munich Re.

Property/casualty? Perhaps Royal or Sun of the United Kingdom, Switzerland's Zurich or Germany's Allianz.

Among major non-U.S. insurers around 1900, certain companies had traits that allowed or pushed them to conduct international business more readily than others. Then, as now, centers of world commerce, finance and shipping tended to harbor the major international players. And, as is the case today, reinsurers in particular found themselves irresistibly drawn into the global arena. European insurers of the late 19th century also had coattails to ride on--those of the empire builders who had fanned out across the globe, bringing with them companies and colonists in need of insurance. In this environment, some enduring international insurance franchises were established.

Reinsurance was breaking through national boundaries with a swiftness that mirrored the increasing mobility of people and goods at the time. Munich Re was a mere 20 years old and already the world's largest reinsurer at the turn of the century, with plenty of international contracts under its belt. It had offices in London; Paris; Copenhagen, Denmark; Stockholm, Sweden; and St. Petersburg, Russia. It had put up $500,000 as security for business written in the United States in 1899, and in the decade to come would absorb major losses--a 1904 fire that scorched 80 blocks of houses in Baltimore and the great 1906 earthquake and fire in San Francisco. The latter loss, as a percentage of premium volume, still stands as the biggest in Munich Re's history.

Munich Re's founders also established Allianz Versicherungs-AG in 1890 as a primary insurer, and by 1900 it was following its German clients around the world, although it would be many years before Allianz established a full-blown foreign subsidiary.Allianz's losses early in the century included its participation as a reinsurer of the Titanic.

Germany is home to the oldest reinsurance company in the world, Cologne Re, founded in 1846. It established a branch in Hartford, Conn., in 1898, and its executive director, Heinrich Gruenwald, wrote two studies on the state of the U.S. market. Its territory at the turn of the century included Russia and Asia, and among its clients were Skandia of Sweden and Helvetia of Switzerland.

The Swiss were making their mark on the global insurance scene in 1900, and prominent among Swiss insurers was Zurich General Accident & Liability Insurance Co., founded in 1872. The turn of the century marked a changing of the guard at Zurich, as Heinrich Mueller, the general manager and a key architect of Zurich's early growth, stepped aside and brought in Fritz Meyer as his successor. A year earlier, construction had begun on Zurich's headquarters near Lake Zurich, a neoclassical monument to the company's success. The company's premium income had grown from about 1 million Swiss francs in 1880 to 15 million francs in 1900. It had branches across Europe and in the United States, where it was soon to join the companies that secured their international standing through the conflagration in San Francisco.

British Empire 

Britain lays claim to the world's oldest insurers, and several already were veterans of the global scene by 1900. Most prominent was Lloyd's of London, which during the 19th century had evolved from a loosely organized assortment of marine underwriters to an increasingly structured and sophisticated market with a growing base of expertise. Lloyd's put nonmarine business on an equal footing with marine in 1903 and issued its first automobile policy in 1904. In 1906, like Munich Re, Lloyd's took its lumps in San Francisco and cemented its reputation for dependability in the United States.

With a history dating to 1688 or earlier, Lloyd's was easily the world's oldest insurance business, though not a company in the traditional sense. The distinction of the oldest company belonged to the Sun Insurance Office Ltd., established in London in 1710. It lives on today as part of Royal & Sun Alliance Insurance Group plc, which was assembled over the years from an assortment of venerable names in the British insurance business.

What would become the Royal & Sun Alliance companies had been abroad for much of the 19th century, taking their business to the United States and tracking the expansion of the British Empire around the globe. Royal was in China before 1850, and by 1900 it was nearing the twilight of its presence there. It would leave China by 1920, and only now is it getting close to resuming business on the mainland. Phoenix Assurance, another future Royal & Sun company, had operations in every corner of the globe, including the United States, continental Europe, Canada, the West Indies, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Africa and Latin America.

Around the World

In Italy, Assicurazioni Generali SpA was a growing force, establishing offices and subsidiaries across Europe and in Latin America. It had been launched in 1831 in the busy Adriatic port of Trieste, which was then part of Austria-Hungary.

Canadian insurers also were branching out at the turn of the century; Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada established an office in southern China in 1899 and in northern China four years later. Manufacturers Life Insurance Co. also was getting established in Asia at that time. Meanwhile, future Asian giants were in their infancy, including Japan's Nippon Life Insurance Co., today the world leader in terms of assets, premiums and policies in force, and Tokio Marine & Fire Insurance Co.

By 1900 insurers had extended their reach to many corners of the globe, but among those that had crossed borders and oceans, the flavor remained largely European. Even the founders of indigenous companies in locales as diverse as the Americas, Australia and Africa tended to be Europeans or their descendants, reflecting the countries that gave birth to modern concepts of insurance. South Africa had Old Mutual, Australia had Colonial Mutual, and the Americas had a host of well-established companies, many of which have themselves gone abroad. British, Germans, Swiss, Dutch, Italians and many others were busily exporting an industry at the turn of the last century. Perhaps most surprising to them would be the longevity of what they created, and the sight of their export coming back home 100 years later through a new generation of global powerhouses.