Ageas Brand Guidelines: Fortis Roots, a New Name in 2010 & Full Ownership of AG

A Belgian insurer, a Dutch bank-insurer and a crisis.

Ageas carries a newer name than its history. Its roots lie in the Belgian life insurer Assurances Générales, founded in 1824, the company now called AG Insurance, according to English Wikipedia. French Wikipedia dates AG’s stock-market listing to 1909 and traces its later names: Fortis AG in 1999, Fortis Insurance Belgium in 2006 and AG Insurance from 2009.

The second root is Dutch. AMEV was founded in Utrecht in 1920 as the Algemeene Maatschappij tot Exploitatie van Verzekeringsmaatschappijen, and in 1990, after the end of rules that had kept banks and insurers apart, it combined with the savings bank VSB. Later that year AG took over AMEV/VSB to form Fortis, a Belgian-Dutch group selling both banking and insurance, English Wikipedia says. The sources used for this guide do not say how AG or AMEV operated during the occupation of 1940–1945.

Fortis then moved into private and investment banking and asset management, and in 2007 it agreed to buy the Dutch bank ABN AMRO jointly with Banco Santander and the Royal Bank of Scotland. The 2008 financial crisis made it hard to finance its part of that purchase, and the group was broken up in late September and early October 2008, with its banking businesses sold to the Dutch and Belgian states and to BNP Paribas, according to English and Dutch Wikipedia. What remained was the Belgian and international insurance business, together with a holding in a portfolio of structured credit, and it traded as Fortis Holding.

On 29 April 2010 shareholders approved a new name, Ageas. Dutch Wikipedia gives two reasons: the Fortis name had suffered in the crisis, and BNP Paribas had bought the name along with the bank. The change was completed early in 2011, and the Belgian insurer had already taken the AG Insurance name.

Brokers, banks and a cricket ground.

Ageas sells through other people’s counters as much as its own. In Belgium, AG Insurance sells through brokers, agents and the branches of BNP Paribas Fortis and bpost, French Wikipedia says, and uses the line “Supporter de votre vie” (“supporter of your life”). Ageas itself describes the group as Belgian-rooted, with a heritage of 200 years, and says it works through a mix of wholly owned subsidiaries and long-term partnerships with financial institutions and distributors.

In the United Kingdom, Ageas UK is based in Eastleigh, Hampshire. In February 2012 Hampshire County Cricket Club announced a six-year deal with Ageas that included naming rights to its ground near Southampton, which became the Ageas Bowl; the ground now carries a different sponsor’s name, the Utilita Bowl, English Wikipedia says.

The British business has grown through deals. Ageas bought Groupama’s UK insurance business in 2012, and in December 2024 it agreed a 20-year partnership with Saga to sell motor and home cover to Saga’s customers, taking over Saga’s underwriter, Acromas Insurance Company, English Wikipedia says. In April 2025 it agreed to buy esure from Bain Capital, and the purchase was completed on 30 September 2025, Insurance Age reported in August 2026. An approach to Direct Line in early 2024 was rejected by Direct Line’s board, and Ageas dropped it on 25 March 2024, Dutch Wikipedia says.

Elsewhere in Europe, Ageas completed its purchase of AXA’s insurance operations in Portugal in June 2016 and sold its French life business in September 2023. In Asia it has preferred joint ventures. It sold its Hong Kong life business in a sale completed in May 2016, raised its stake in the Indian life insurer Ageas Federal Life to 74% in 2022, and took a 40% stake in the Turkish life and pension company then called AvivaSA in 2021. In September 2026 Maybank completed its purchase of Ageas’s remaining 30.95% of Maybank Ageas Holdings, the holding company for Etiqa in Malaysia and Singapore, The Star reported.

How European insurers present themselves.

European insurers sell something that cannot be seen or held, so their identities do a great deal of the work. Many rely on a short wordmark or a simple symbol, often drawn in a single strong colour such as orange, blue, red or green, and repeated on offices, apps, letters and roadside-assistance vans. Several of these marks have been redrawn in recent years with softer shapes, lowercase letters or brighter tones meant to read well on small screens.

The language tends to be plain. Product pages for home, car, life and pension cover usually lead with short sentences about what is included, what a customer can expect when making a claim and how to get in touch, and campaign lines often speak directly to the reader. Photography leans towards customers, families, homes and everyday moments rather than abstract imagery, and many groups add illustration systems and short animations to explain how a policy or pension works.

Sponsorship is another common thread. Insurers attach their names to running events, football teams, sailing races, stadiums, music festivals and museums, which puts the colour and symbol in front of large audiences far from any policy document. Some also run foundations or corporate art collections that hold exhibitions under the group name.

The paperwork matters too. Listed insurers publish annual reports, sustainability reports and investor presentations that follow the same typography and colour rules as their marketing, and these documents are often the clearest public record of how a brand is applied in long-form layouts, charts and tables. For a designer, the useful lessons sit in that consistency: one mark, a short palette and a calm, readable voice used across many countries and channels.

A settlement, a partner and full ownership of AG.

The Fortis years left legal work behind. In March 2016 Ageas reached a settlement with investor organisations representing former Fortis shareholders, without admitting any fault, and on 13 July 2018 the Amsterdam Court of Appeal declared the settlement binding under the Dutch collective-settlement law, according to Dutch Wikipedia.

The link with BNP Paribas has since become a partnership. In April 2024 BNP Paribas acquired Fosun’s stake of about 9% in Ageas, and in February 2025 it raised its holding to about 15%, English Wikipedia says. On 7 December 2025 the two groups agreed that Ageas would buy the 25% stake in AG Insurance held by BNP Paribas Fortis, while BNP Paribas Cardif would raise its holding in Ageas to 22.5%.

Ageas announced the completion of the AG Insurance purchase in late April 2026, giving it full ownership of what it calls its market-leading Belgian subsidiary. The bancassurance partnership between AG and BNP Paribas Fortis was renewed for another 15 years, and the two groups signed a relationship agreement running for five years with automatic renewal, the company said.

Ageas now describes itself as an international insurance group concentrated on Europe and Asia, with life and non-life products for retail and business customers and a reinsurance activity. In its April 2026 announcement it listed businesses in Belgium, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Türkiye and several Asian countries, including China, India, Thailand and the Philippines, and gave its staff as about 55,000.

For a design guide, Ageas shows how a group can replace a damaged name while keeping the older brands that customers already know, such as AG in Belgium. Compare Aegon, another Benelux insurer built from mergers, and AXA, whose Portuguese insurance business Ageas bought in 2016. For this guide we use a claret, a terracotta and a soft linen with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Ageas’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.