Fire society
| Feuersozietät Berlin Brandenburg Versicherung Aktiengesellschaft | |
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| legal form | Corporation |
| founding | 1718 |
| Seat | Berlin |
| Board | Frederic Roßbeck (chair), Frank A. Werner |
| Supervisory authority | Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) |
| Insured | around 640,000 (2014) |
| Employee | 321 (2014) |
| Website | www.feuersozietaet.de |
The fire society is the second oldest insurance company in Germany. It was in 1718 in Berlin by Prussian King Frederick William I founded. Together with the Berlin Brandenburg public life insurance company founded in 1947, it is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Versicherungskammer Bayern group , is one of the public insurers and is part of the Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe .
Business activity
In its Berlin and Brandenburg business area, the fire law firm focuses on insurance solutions for private customers, businesses and local authorities. In doing so, it primarily uses two sales channels, a nationwide network of around 130 independent insurance agencies and the savings banks in Berlin and Brandenburg with a total of over 500 branches. There are cooperation agreements with the savings banks.
Offered residential buildings , household contents , liability , automobile insurance and accident , commercial , agricultural and life insurance . In addition, customers receive products from other companies in the VKB Group, such as Union Krankenversicherung (UKV) and Union Reiseversicherung (URV). The range of insurance also includes products from ÖRAG legal protection insurance and Roland legal protection insurance.
The fire law firm trains “insurance and finance salespeople specializing in insurance” every year and accompanies a dual degree in business administration specializing in insurance.
Fire society and public life, as core companies in the VKB Group , have been rated "A" (very good) by the rating agency Standard & Poor’s with a stable outlook.
The competent supervisory authority is the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin).
history
18th and 19th centuries
With the aim of "permanent maintenance of the buildings", Friedrich Wilhelm I, known as the soldier king, founded the fire society in Berlin in 1718 as a monopoly insurance company with compulsory insurance. The following year the fire society was also founded for Brandenburg. After the end of the Seven Years' War , the overarching land fire society was founded in 1765.
The first major insured events are an explosion of the powder tower at Spandauer Tor (August 12, 1720) and a lightning strike in the Petrikirche (May 29, 1730), with the nave , valuable church treasures and 44 adjacent residential buildings being destroyed.
In the course of time, the fire society received different statutes and names for its expanding areas of activity. Neumärkische , Kurmärkische , Land-Feuersozietät and also a partnership for the flat state of the province of Brandenburg are names that did not really have any real meaning in the population, as the simple name of a fire society was established in everyday parlance.
Until World War II
In 1923, at the time of hyperinflation , the fire society had an uncovered sum of 10,416,420,030,989,447.97 marks. This sum of over 10 quadrillion (paper) Mark fell in the currency reform at 10,416.42 Rentenmark .
In 1924, the flat country and the city society were merged to form the fire society of the province of Brandenburg , which moved in 1936 into the newly built building Am Karlsbad 4–5 in Berlin-Tiergarten. The fire society Berlin operated from April 27, 1938 in the Neues Stadthaus at Parochialstrasse 1-3 until the building was confiscated in 1945 by the Soviet military administration in Germany . Around 40,000 files had to be transferred to the building of the fire society of the province of Brandenburg am Karlsbad.
During the division of Germany
As a result of the division of Berlin and Germany , the fire law firm Berlin lost around 45% of its contracts, but was soon able to show more than 150,000 newly concluded insurance contracts. In 1947 the Berlin Life Insurance Company, now the Berlin Brandenburg Public Life Insurance Company, was founded.
The enamel signs of the insurance company, which depict the Berlin bear and the Märkischer Adler , still bear witness to the company that originally insured. The fire society's red “Flammen-F” brand logo has been used since the mid-1950s.
As already under the Prussian law, the fire law firm was compulsory and monopoly insurer for building fire insurance in the districts of old Berlin in West Berlin before 1920 ( Tiergarten , Wedding and Kreuzberg ) on the basis of the "Law on Fire Society Berlin" after the Second World War . Every building owner was obliged to insure the house against the risk of fire ( compulsory insurance ) - and this exclusively with the fire society ( monopoly insurance ). This did not apply to the other districts of West Berlin, which belonged to the province of Brandenburg until 1920 (e.g. Spandau , Charlottenburg , etc.). Corresponding to these “benefices” that favor the law firm, the fire society had a basic obligation to insure every building located in its business area, if this was requested by the property owner, according to the legally regulated acceptance obligation. This obligation also applied to the other West Berlin districts mentioned above.
Since the building fire insurance is a "reconstruction insurance" - regardless of the state of preservation and current value of the building - this led to extreme compensation payments, for which the fire society had to pay, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s in old West Berlin due to numerous arson . Sometimes there was even suspicion that building owners wanted to have their property rebuilt through arson.
Development since 1990
With the reunification in 1990, the fire society was obliged to accept all buildings in the three other districts of old Berlin ( Mitte , Friedrichshain and Prenzlauer Berg ). The trend of arson continued here too. Only after the amendment to the law on fire society, which was required by an EU directive, did the compulsory and monopoly insurance and the acceptance obligation cease to exist, which enabled the deficit development to be stopped.
In the reunified Germany, the fire law firm expanded its business activities to East Berlin and beyond the city limits into the home state of Brandenburg - by setting up branches and insurance agencies as well as working with the savings banks in the business area. In 1995 the fire society - public life moved to a second location in Potsdam , where it is now represented by a regional directorate. There are two further regional directorates in Frankfurt an der Oder and Berlin. Thanks to the cooperation with the savings banks in the state of Brandenburg , nationwide accessibility could be achieved.
In 2004, the fire society and the public life operating under the same brand umbrella were privatized by the states of Berlin and Brandenburg and taken over by a consortium of the Bavarian Insurance Chamber , SV SparkassenVersicherung and Sparkassen-Versicherung Sachsen . The Versicherungskammer Bayern has been the sole shareholder in both companies since 2012. The fire society thus continues to belong to the group of public insurers .
Web links
- Fire firm website
- Feuersozietät Berlin Brandenburg Versicherung Aktiengesellschaft in the company database of BaFin
- Public life insurance Berlin Brandenburg Aktiengesellschaft in the company database of BaFin
Individual evidence
- ^ Homepage of the Association of Public Insurers , accessed on February 1, 2016.
- ^ Homepage of the East German Savings Bank Association , accessed on February 1, 2016.
- ^ Annual report of the fire society 2014, p. 5 ff , accessed on February 1, 2016.
- ^ Homepage of the fire society, as of spring 2015 , accessed on February 1, 2016.
- ^ Homepage of the fire society , accessed on February 1, 2016.
- ↑ William L. Evenden, German Fire Insurance signs, 1989 Publisher ff insurance industry Karlsruhe, S. 98 , accessed on 1 February 2016th
- ^ Homepage of the fire society , accessed on February 1, 2016.