Zurich hub to support Scor Switzerland & Scor Global Life Reinsurance Switzerland

France-based reinsurer Scor has launched the implementation of the planned hub structure in Zurich for its life and non-life operations in Switzerland and on various other markets, notably non-life treaty business in Austria and central eastern Europe and certain property and casualty specialty underwriting throughout the world.

In life, underwriting conducted from the hub concerns the Swiss and Liechtenstein markets, as well as the eastern Mediterranean markets. The legal structure and implementation of the hub structure will be subject to approval by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority FINMA.

Paolo Varisco, formerly the head of group internal audit, is the designated CEO of the Zurich hub unit which will support Scor Switzerland and Scor Global Life Reinsurance Switzerland.

Michael Breuer is the hub’s designated CFO, Roland Imfeld the designated human resources director and Peter Frei is designated to take on the duties of hub chief information officer. Bernd Langer will be in charge of risk management and internal controls in the hub. Christian Felderer finally will be the general counsel of the hub.

In the intended structure, the hub will provide back office support to both Scor Global Life Reinsurance Switzerland and Scor Switzerland entities such as accounting, human resources, and IT system and compliance. It will use and manage specialist financial modelling services under the responsibility of Michel Dacorogna. In the course of the implementation, Scor Global Life’s entity in Switzerland, currently based in Zug, is envisaged to be moving to the Zurich hub under the management of Gaby Hollmann.

The hub is intended to support life and non-life underwriting units with regional responsibilities with regard to treaty business. It will provide similar support to those non-life units which, under the management of Benjamin Gentsch, conduct business throughout the world. The legal structures of Scor Holding Switzerland, Scor Switzerland and Scor Global Life Reinsurance Switzerland will remain unchanged, along with the responsibilities of their managers.

The hub will house the group CFO and group financial planning and analysis, along with group financial modelling services, group internal auditing, the group compliance officer, the group general counsel operations for life and non-life as well as the deputy CEO of Scor Global P&C.

The hub will support Scor Holding Switzerland, whose CEO is Mr Gentsch, and whose board of directors is chaired by Denis Kessler.

Mr Kessler said: The decision to pursue the implementation of the Zurich hub confirms the group’s intention to structure itself around six managerial and administrative platforms, supporting local and regional underwriting and, as in the case of Zurich, global underwriting conducted from the hub. On an organizational level, the creation of the Zurich hub will mark the end of the integration of former Converium and Revios into joint management structures. Integration in terms of underwriting is already complete.