Allianz CEO Oliver Bäte is dissatisfied with the influx of new customers at Germany's largest insurer.

Existing customers give Allianz's service good marks in surveys. "But we are not yet able to translate this satisfaction into stronger customer growth - especially in our core markets in Europe," said Bäte in his speech to the Group's virtual Annual General Meeting on Thursday, which was published in advance on Tuesday. "Our aim is to change this as soon as possible." Allianz serves around 122 million customers worldwide.

Bäte, who has been in office since 2015, said he wanted to make Allianz more crisis-proof. This is a result of its size and the associated responsibility for society. "This is not only the concern of the Board of Management and Supervisory Board, but also of our supervisors. We must also arm ourselves against very unlikely risks that harbor great loss potential." The most important lever here is "a culture that sees a high level of trust and strong controls as two sides of the same coin".

The scandal surrounding structured alpha hedge funds in the USA, where fund managers failed to comply with their own regulations at the beginning of the coronavirus crisis, cost Allianz more than five billion euros. "We will elevate the implementation of the various regulatory rules from a compulsory exercise to a core discipline of our top management. Because an event like Structured Alpha should not happen again," Bäte promised.

The Allianz CEO reaffirmed the targets he set for the insurer a year and a half ago - "even if our environment has become fundamentally tougher in the meantime", as Bäte said. These include an increase in earnings per share of five to seven percent per year, a return on equity of more than 13 percent and a solvency ratio of more than 180 percent. Allianz has set itself an operating profit target of 14.2 billion euros for 2023.

(Report by Alexander Hübner. Edited by Christian Götz. If you have any questions, please contact our editorial team at berlin.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for politics and the economy) or frankfurt.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for companies and markets).)