Gen Re Brand Guidelines: A 1921 Reinsurer, Cologne Re & Berkshire Hathaway Since 1998

A 1921 casualty reinsurer and a new name in 1923.

Gen Re began in 1921 as the General Casualty and Surety Reinsurance Corporation, English and German Wikipedia both say, and soon took over the United States business of the Norwegian Globe Insurance Company of Christiania, Norway. In 1923 American investors bought it and renamed it the General Reinsurance Corporation. In 1928 a holding company, the General Alliance Corporation, was formed to own its shares together with a half share, alongside the Royal Exchange Assurance group of London, in the United British Insurance Company, whose American branch worked as a “running mate” to General Reinsurance under the same management; English Wikipedia quotes a contemporary account calling the pair the first “Group” in American casualty reinsurance.

From early on it chose a particular way of working. In 1929, English Wikipedia says, it confirmed that it would be only a direct reinsurer, dealing with insurance companies itself rather than through brokers. In 1945 it merged with the Mellon Indemnity Corporation. The company today calls itself an “underwriting company,” “more interested in underwriting quality than volume.”

It also claims firsts from that era: Gen Re says it was the first company to offer casualty and property facultative reinsurance, the case-by-case cover for single large risks, in the 1950s, and English Wikipedia dates its casualty facultative department to 1954 and property facultative to 1956. In the same decades it began writing reinsurance outside North America. Its head office moved from New York to Greenwich, Connecticut, in 1974 and to Stamford, Connecticut, in 1984, where it remains; in 1980 the holding company, General Re Corporation, was listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

Cologne Re, Berkshire and a shorter name.

In 1994 General Reinsurance formed an alliance with Cologne Re, the Kölnische Rückversicherungs-Gesellschaft of Cologne in Germany. Gen Re says Cologne Re was founded in 1846 as the world’s first independent professional reinsurance company and signed its first treaty in 1852; German Wikipedia says the idea grew out of the Great Fire of Hamburg in May 1842. The sources used for this guide do not cover Cologne Re’s history during the Nazi period and the Second World War, 1933–45.

On 21 December 1998 Berkshire Hathaway completed its purchase of General Re Corporation, Warren Buffett wrote in his letter to shareholders for that year, adding that the company also held a large majority of Cologne Re. “For many decades,” Buffett wrote, “General Re’s name has stood for quality, integrity and professionalism in reinsurance.” In 2003 General Reinsurance and Cologne Re began to market themselves together under one short name, Gen Re. General Reinsurance completed its purchase of Cologne Re in 2009, and in 2010 the German company was renamed General Reinsurance AG.

Today General Re Corporation, a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary, is the holding company. Gen Re says its group includes New England Asset Management (NEAM), GenStar, Genesis and Faraday, and that it has 36 offices in 22 countries; English Wikipedia lists offices from Atlanta and Toronto to Cologne, Cape Town, Mumbai, Tokyo and Sydney. Its business is split between property and casualty and life and health reinsurance, and in 2021 it marked its hundredth year alongside the 175th of Cologne Re.

How reinsurers present themselves.

Reinsurers sell to insurance companies rather than to the public, so their brands rarely appear on a high street. What they publish instead is aimed at underwriters, brokers, investors and regulators, and the design tends to follow: sober wordmarks, often built on a short name or an acronym, with a restrained palette that has to sit comfortably on a balance sheet as well as on a conference banner.

Much of a reinsurer’s visible output is research. Catastrophe-model maps of windstorm, earthquake and flood zones, risk-science papers, studies of climate and natural catastrophes and reports on life and health trends do the work that advertising does for consumer brands. They show expertise to clients and give the company a reason to be quoted, and their charts, maps and covers become a large part of how the brand is seen.

The rest is disclosure. Listed reinsurers publish annual reports, solvency and financial-condition reports and investor presentations, and they reprint the ratings given by agencies such as Standard & Poor’s and AM Best. These documents are long, dense and built on tables, so a clear grid, a legible text face and consistent figure styles matter more than display type.

Many reinsurers also add a cultural or scientific side. Client seminars and training programmes bring cedants together, and some groups run foundations: Hannover Re’s, set up in 1991, lends contemporary art to a museum in Hanover, while SCOR has run a foundation for science since 2011. For a designer, the lesson is a register of calm authority, in which a well-set report carries more weight than a slogan.

The people behind the promise.

Gen Re’s record includes a serious episode. In January 2010 the US Securities and Exchange Commission charged General Re Corporation over its part in schemes by AIG and Prudential Financial to manipulate their reported results, Insurance Journal reported on 20 January 2010. According to the SEC, a foreign subsidiary of Gen Re entered into two sham reinsurance transactions with AIG in 2000, and Gen Re entered a series of reinsurance contracts with Prudential’s property and casualty division from 1997 to 2002 that, the SEC said, had no economic substance. Gen Re settled the SEC charges, signed a non-prosecution agreement with the Justice Department and settled a civil class action. The SEC said it took into account Gen Re’s cooperation and reforms, which included dissolving the subsidiary involved, adding an independent director and requiring legal review of such contracts. English Wikipedia adds that the convictions of five former Gen Re and AIG executives were overturned on appeal in August 2011, and that a court approved the class-action settlement in September 2013.

Its public face is restrained. Its website carries the line “The people behind the promise” and the words “A Berkshire Hathaway Company,” and quotes Warren Buffett: “Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.” It sums up its offer in short phrases such as “single-point underwriting, pricing, and claims accountability,” “direct access to decision makers” and a “long-term view of client relationships,” and it also claims to have been the first company to write reinsurance on an excess basis. Much of what it publishes is technical writing for insurers: a Knowledge Center of papers on liability claims, underwriting and medical topics, a Business School, and training academies on claims and behavioural economics for life insurers.

For a design guide, Gen Re shows how an old reinsurer can shorten a long legal name into a two-syllable brand while keeping a sober, text-led voice. Compare TransRe, another American reinsurer, and Munich Re, a German one. For this guide we use a ledger blue, a pale stone and a bronze with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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