Torsten Leue

We’re a people business. Our employees are our biggest success factor, especially because they are empowered to make their own decisions. I personally experienced early in my career how empowering trust from a leader can unleash enormous energy. Since then, I have been convinced: leadership is not about ‘predict and control’ but about ‘sense and respond’ empowering people to grow and succeed, while holding them accountable too.

We are a decentralised company. Within a clearly defined strategic framework, our national subsidiaries possess a high degree of transparency and clear responsibility for results. For us, responsibility and accountability go hand in hand. Our approach follows the motto ‘pull instead of push’ which makes us faster and more agile, as we avoid cumbersome, centralised decision-making structures. Thus, we enable our local units to be close to the business and the needs of our customers. They can identify ‘weak signals’ early on – those subtle, qualitative clues to potential changes that may later become highly significant – and react quickly to stay ahead of the market.

Trust is the foundation of our performance culture and gives entrepreneurial freedom in our strategic framework. It creates an environment of psychological safety, where people feel free to express their opinions and give feedback without fear of negative consequences. It allows us to talk about things that haven't worked out. Only in such an open environment can we recognise the important weak signals and make the best decisions, which may also be directed against the status quo. Without trust there’s no innovation.

Apart from trust, a value-based culture is the anchor of our high level of employee responsibility and accountability as well as of our decentralised structure. Our values are transparency, engagement, and collaboration. Transparency creates open dialogues that allow us to share challenges, uncertainties and best practices to grow together. Engagement is the positive energy, the passion that drives us forward. Collaboration is the engine that lets us work together as a "star team" to achieve high performance. All three values enable us to live up to our purpose ‘together we take care of the unexpected and foster entrepreneurship’.

We focus on relative performance rather than absolute numbers. This means we measure our success by outperforming our competitors. This approach encourages us to continuously improve and anticipate emerging trends. It gives us a contextualized view of our performance and helps us to adapt quickly to new market conditions.

We were founded in 1903 as a mutual insurance company by customers for customers. As a result, taking care of our customers' needs – and their money – is deeply rooted in our DNA. Today, this is reflected in our company purpose ‘together we take care of the unexpected and foster entrepreneurship”. Cost leadership does not mean cutting corners or compromising on quality. On the contrary, we combine the advantages of cost leadership and high quality for our customers. Cost leadership has shaped our success for decades and has allowed us to remain profitable and resilient, especially in challenging times. It’s not only in our DNA, but part of our culture.