In the first six months of the year the UNIQA Group   took over 80% of the shares of Assicurazioni La Carnica in Udine and founded a branch of UNIQA Personenversicherung AG in Milan. Thus the Group covers all lines of business in the north of Italy. In the last quarter of 2000 a contract was drawn up for the acquisition of the Polish Polonia insurance company, and its subsidiary Polonia Life.

At the same time, in the business year concluded, a start was made on restructuring the foreign segment, by tidying up the structure of participations. The Group‘s shares in Interrisk were sold, as was the holding in the Hungarian Signal company. UNIQA Assurances, Geneva joined the UNIQA International Versicherungs-Holding.

The brand relaunches of the Group’s subsidiaries UNIQA osiguranje (Croatia) and UNIQA Assurances (Switzerland) last year were followed this year by UNIQA poistovna (Slowakiai). In the first half of 2001 the Czech subsidiary CRP will become UNIQA pojistovna.

In Croatia UNIQA since last year has concentrated on distribution via banks, selling life products via the local Raiffeisen banks.

A push for growth abroad will create opportunities for expansion, and the regional spread of risk will reduce dependence on the tense domestic market.

Key figures for foreign business
The fully consolidated insurance business of the Group outside Austria covers UNIQA Assurances in Switzerland, Austria Assicurazioni and Assicurazioni La Carnica in Italy, Cesko-Rakouska Pojistovna (CRP) in the Czech Republic, UNIQA poistovna in the c and UNIQA osiguranje in Croatia. These increased their premium volume by 40.9% to, the equivalent of ATS 1,870.9 million (EUR 136 million).  This figure includes the Italian Carnica for the first time. The share of the Group’s premium income that the foreign companies account for is 5.4% (1999: 4.2%).

The result of ordinary business activity of the foreign companies declined by 7.7% last year to ATS 109.6 million (EUR 8,0 million). Their share of the Group result (according to IAS) was19.0%.

Of the 6,443 staff employed by the UNIQA Group, in the business year concluded 922 were working abroad