The property in Warsaw is a modern office project, which has been developed by the Polish developer, SGI Baltis. The property is located directly on Aleja Jerozolimska, the arterial road from the Warsaw International Airport, in the direct vicinity of the headquarters of other international companies and is well-linked to the public transport network.After completion in spring 2010, around 10,500 m2 of office and retail space, as well as 85 garage spaces will be available on a total of 7 floors.Due to the strong growth of the Polish UNIQA company, UNIQA intends to use part of the building for its own purposes - around half will be rented to third parties.

Already in February 2008, UNIQA Real Estate acquired the fully-let “Poznan Business Centre PBC” - a five-storey office building with around 8,000 m2 of office and retail space, as well as 62 parking spaces, in the centre of the city of Poznan in Western Poland.

Gottfried Wanitschek, the Board Member of UNIQA Versicherungen AG responsible for asset management, real estate and equity holdings:“As one of the most dynamic insurance groups in Central and Eastern Europe, in step with the expansion of our core business, we have also expanded our real estate investment to include the Eastern and South Eastern European region. The current project in Warsaw is only a small excerpt from our extensive activities on the many regional real estate markets.We have never questioned the traditionally high share of real estate in our capital investments and will certainly maintain it in the future - in contrast to several other European insurance companies, which have disposed of, or outsourced, large portions of their real estate packages in recent years.Particularly in turbulent times, the advantage of this investment category, which is regarded as being ‘conservative’, has been confirmed.From experience and because we can show strong capitalisation, I also regard UNIQA as being more intensively on the ‘buyer side’ and certainly not on the ‘seller side’ in the future - this applies to Austria, as well as Eastern and Southern Europe.”

UNIQA Real Estate AG - UNIQA real estate portfolio
As a real estate subsidiary of the UNIQA Group Austria, UNIQA Real Estate AG is responsible for establishing and expanding a real estate portfolio and equity holdings, as well as managing the properties - with a primary focus on the Central and Eastern European markets.
The aim of the company is, on the one hand, to cover the UNIQA Group’s own requirements and, on the other hand, to generate sustainably attractive returns.

The portfolio of UNIQA Real Estate AG currently includes more than 50 properties in Austria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Germany, Croatia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Ukraine and Serbia. The total floor space of the buildings amounts to more than 200,000 m2. In the coming years, the portfolio is to be expanded further.

In addition to UNIQA Real Estate, UNIQA also owns extensive real estate through other companies in the Group.  In total, these are more than 400 buildings with floor space of around 900,000 m2 and a value of around € 2,000 million (of which UNIQA Real Estate owns approx. € 500 million). For historical reasons, the majority (85%) of the real estate owned is in Austria. In Vienna alone, 204 residential, office and retail buildings are owned by the UNIQA Group – of which more than 50 are in the Vienna city centre.

UNIQA Poland
The UNIQA Group is active in Poland with a property and life insurance company, under the standardised UNIQA brand and can look back on extremely dynamic development.In the first half of 2008 alone, the premium income was able to be more than doubled, to around PLN 850 million, while the total market “only” gained by around one third. With this, UNIQA is among the ten largest of the approx. 70 insurance companies active on the Polish market. The unusually high growth results from the consistent strengthening of the sales position in favour of organic growth and the massively intensified cooperation with the local Raiffeisenbank, within the context of our “preferred partnership”. In the previous year, the growth in premiums for UNIQA in Poland was also significantly above the market average. UNIQA employs around 900 staff in Poland, manages nearly 1.6 million policies and has 290 customer offices and agencies throughout the country.