Swiss Life Brand Guidelines: Zurich’s Rentenanstalt of 1857 and a Fresh Start in 2004

A cooperative for Swiss families.

Swiss Life began in Zurich on 21 November 1857 as the Schweizerische Lebensversicherungs- und Rentenanstalt, soon known simply as the Rentenanstalt. German Wikipedia names Conrad Widmer as its founder and says it was set up with the help of the Schweizerische Kreditanstalt, the bank later known as Credit Suisse; both the English and German Wikipedia articles describe it as the first life insurer in Switzerland. It was a cooperative, and its first supervisory board included the Zurich politician Alfred Escher, who also chaired the bank. German Wikipedia quotes the founders’ aim: to give Swiss heads of household, on sound foundations, a way to set aside a small part of their earnings for their families against the changes of life. Its board drew members from most Swiss cantons.

The company looked abroad early. Widmer obtained a licence in Prussia in 1866, and business in Hamburg and Bremen followed a year later; German Wikipedia notes that each German kingdom and duchy then had its own general agent, and that the handwritten policies were all issued in Zurich. By 1885 the Rentenanstalt had grown enough to separate from the Kreditanstalt, after which surpluses went to its insured members. Branches followed in France in 1898 and in the Netherlands in 1900, where the business traded as Zwitser Leven, the Dutch for Swiss Life, and later in Belgium, Britain, Spain, Luxembourg and Italy.

Its buildings tell the same story of growth. The first office sat in the Tiefenhöfe on Zurich’s Paradeplatz; the company moved several times before opening a head office on the Alpenquai in 1898, and between 1937 and 1939 a modern building by the Pfister architecture firm went up nearby. Extended from 1961 to 1963 and later, it still houses the head office, according to Wikipedia.

From mutual to listed group.

The German business that began in 1866 placed the Rentenanstalt among the Swiss insurers working in Germany between 1933 and 1945. The Independent Commission of Experts Switzerland – Second World War studied all Swiss insurers with branches or subsidiaries in National Socialist territory in volume 12 of its publications, issued in 2001 and 2002. Its summary describes the sector as a whole: the companies decided, for financial reasons, to continue their German business; their German branches dismissed Jewish employees, often ahead of the law; and their handling of Jewish clients’ confiscated policies differed from company to company. The commission concluded that the Swiss insurers followed a strict economic logic and largely ignored moral and ethical questions in that period.

The modern company took shape in the 1990s. In 1997 the Rentenanstalt converted from a cooperative into a listed company, turning around 600,000 members into shareholders, German Wikipedia says, and its shares joined the Swiss Market Index in 1998. A run of purchases followed, among them the property firm Livit and the Ticino bank Banca del Gottardo in 1999. In 2002 the group paused, adopted a holding structure and took the name Swiss Life; German Wikipedia says the Rentenanstalt name was dropped in 2003, and that in 2004 the company relaunched as Swiss Life with a simplified brand structure and a new corporate design. The company’s own spelling of the name runs the two words together.

Disposals came next. The British business went to Resolution Life in 2004, the Dutch and Belgian businesses were sold in 2007 to SNS Reaal, which kept the Zwitserleven brand, and Banca del Gottardo was sold in November 2007. Swiss Life bid for the German financial adviser AWD in December 2007 and held 86.2 percent by March 2008; AWD became Swiss Life Select in 2013.

How 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.

Pensions, property and a hockey arena.

Today Swiss Life Holding is based in Zurich and reports by market: Switzerland, France and Germany, plus an International segment and Swiss Life Asset Managers. English Wikipedia calls it the largest life insurer in Switzerland. In its home market it trades under the Swiss Life, Swiss Life Select and Swiss Life Wealth Managers brands; the German branch, founded in 1866, is based near Munich and focuses on pensions and occupational retirement plans, while the French arm adds private banking through Swiss Life Banque Privée. The asset-management side has grown through property purchases, including Corpus Sireo in 2014, Mayfair Capital in London in 2016 and BEOS in 2018.

The brand is most visible through sport and culture. Swiss Life sponsored the Swiss national football teams from 2004 to 2020, has been general sponsor of the Zurich ice hockey club ZSC Lions since the 2015–16 season, and gives its name to the Swiss Life Arena in Zurich-Altstetten, which opened in 2022 and hosted its first ZSC Lions home game on 18 October 2022, according to German Wikipedia. The company also supports the Zurich Film Festival, the Lucerne Festival, the Zurich Opera House and the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, and runs the Perspectives Foundation, set up in 2005, which backs charitable projects in Switzerland.

For a design guide, Swiss Life shows how a nineteenth-century cooperative with a long institutional name became a short two-word brand, and how a 2004 relaunch put one name over a group that had grown through many purchases. Compare the Zurich Insurance and Helvetia guides for two other Swiss insurers. For this guide we use a deep crimson, slate and warm stone with a plain grotesque sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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