L'abolition des monopoles d'assurances immobilières en Allemagne : Leçons pour la Suisse

We study, what Switzerland can learn from the disappearance of the property insurance monopolies in Germany. We show that the German insurance monopolies did not fight hard enough to defend their interests. a) Most of them knew that they would be bought up by another public insurance company. The monopoly was not for them a question of survival. b) The German monopolies did not have their own interest group. They were defended by the Association of Public Insurers. This association has much wider interests to defend than just the monopolies in the property insurance market. c) For the small customer the disappearance of the state monopolies was a painful event. Within five years their premium rates rose by about 50%, and the contributions paid by the insurance companies for fire prevention fell massively. It is well known, however, that consumers do not constitute a powerful pressure group.