It was a prescient move: As of January 1, Coomber becomes the insurer’s first non-Swiss chief executive in nearly a century.
“People did lapse into Swiss German fairly frequently,” Coomber recalls of his early board days. “Nowadays we run through entire meetings without switching from English.” Coomber succeeds Walter Kielholz, who was appointed chairman at Credit Suisse Group but will remain a vice chairman at Swiss Re.
The 53-year-old Coomber joined Swiss Re as a trainee actuary 30 years ago and rose to become head of its U.K. subsidiary in the early 1990s. The Englishman’s success in driving the stunning growth of Swiss Re’s life and health insurance business over the past seven years helped win him the top spot: Coomber’s London-based group grew by more than 30 percent a year during the period and now generates 42 percent of Swiss Re’s premium income, up from 18 percent when Coomber took over.
The collapse in equity markets has hit Swiss Re like other insurers. First-half net fell 91 percent after the company took a huge write-down on its equity portfolio, and its credit rating was lowered in October. Still, the company retains a capital position strong enough to take advantage of the spikes in underwriting rates in its core business of property/casualty insurance, Coomber asserts. “We still have to capture the benefits of the hard cycle,” he says. “This is an opportunity that comes along once every six or seven years.”
