International Cooperative and
Mutual Insurance Federation

It’s also difficult to imagine someone better qualified to lead DEVK than its current CEO, Friedrich Gieseler, for railways run deep in his family. His father Willi worked in management for the German railway service and Mr Gieseler himself began working for the state railway operator Deutsche Bahn (DB) after completing his degree in business administration. Two years later, when he was 24, he switched from DB to DEVK, and since then his whole management career has been built entirely with the insurer.

For CEO Jens Bærentsen, Alka’s values permeate all aspects of its work. He detects, he says, a real battle of ideas in the insurance industry between cooperatives and mutuals, who operate on the basis of a common pooling of deposits to help those who have accidents, and publicly listed insurers with their emphasis on profitability (and, all too often, on raising premiums). “To me it’s very important that we keep to our principles. We are driven by a focus on our customers, not the bottom line,” he says.

Extract from ‘Danish cooperative insurer Alka aims for the simple life’

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