www.unipolsai.com

Fully operative since 6 January 2014, UnipolSai Assicurazioni S.p.A. is the multi-branch insurance company of the Unipol Group that originated from the merger by incorporation into  Fondiaria-Sai of the historic Unipol Assicurazioni and Milano Assicurazioni companies, as well as of Premafin, the financial holding of the former Fondiaria Sai Group. An Italian leader in the Damages branches, in particular in Auto Civil Liability, and relying on a position of absolute pre-eminence in the Life Insurance branches, UnipolSai occupies second position in the national classification of insurance companies for overall underwritings. At present the company is operating through seven divisions – Unipol, La Fondiaria, Sai, Milano, Nuova MAA, Sasa, and La Previdente – and the largest network of agencies in Italy, through which it offers a complete range of insurance solutions.

UnipolSai Assicurazioni originated from the merger of some of the most important and historic Italian insurance companies – Unipol Assicurazioni, Fondiaria-Sai, and Milano Assicurazioni – and Premafin, the financial holding of the former Fondiaria-Sai Group. These different origins and paths have crossed the history of the 19^th and 20^th centuries up to the 21^st century, fully interpreting both their moments of expansion and also all the complexities. These represent an intersecting of experiences that converge in a approach to the customer that has always brought innovation to the concept of business, realizing over the course of time important development projects until becoming a new symbol of the Italian insurance reality.

La Fondiaria was founded in 1879, in completion of an efficacious cycle of financial initiatives in Florence that included the founding of the Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze, the Società Italiana per le Strade Ferrate Meridionali, and the Società Generale di Credito Mobiliare. In addition to prestigious exponents of the French capital, the promoters of the company were headed by George de Soubeyran and Émile Guitard, the major notables of the money aristocracy in Liguria and Tuscany, among whom were prominent Domenico Balduino, Tommaso Corsini, Pietro Bastogi, in addition to Carlo Alfieri di Sostegno, Gerolamo Bassi, Giulio Belinzaghi, and Carlo Fenzi.

The company was the first to anticipate an divisional type of company organizational model, which today is still popular, and included companies that were distinct from the legal, accountancy-,  and asset-related points of view(La Fondiaria incendio [Fire], La Fondiaria vita [Life], and La Fondiaria infortune [Accident]). They were united, however, under a single governance that controlled both the central management and that of the suburbs, extended from the very start to the entire national territory. Among the operational records introduced from the very beginning of business there were the guarantee against the un-profitableness of things damaged by fire and the guarantee against “accidents that may damage the human body”.

Starting from the first decade of its life, the Group inaugurated foreign agencies in Paris, London and Berlin. This development accelerated between 1939 and 1940 with the setting up of the general agencies in Tirana, Scutari, Durazzo and Rodi. For several decades the Group’s solidity  was accompanied by an exemplary accountancy administration which, after the French left the company’s management at the end of the 19^th century, was guaranteed by a management of Jewish origin characterized by extremely high technical capacities. This strong point enabled the company to appear, between 1906 and 1908, among the protagonists of compensations for damages from the earthquakes in both San Francisco and Messina.

In 1909 in order to extend business to the more technically complex branch, that of grandine, it acquired the expertise matured by the mutual cooperative La Reale grandine of Bologna, transforming it into a joint-stock company and integrating it into the Group. During the First World War, furthermore, the very old Viennese insurance company Danubio was absorbed: from it another company was derived called the “Compagnia italiana di assicurazioni La Previdente”, with seat and management in Milan. In the years spanning the two World Wars, it acquired the majority of shares in the Tuscan company, thus coming into possession of a considerable real-estate patrimony.

From 1945 on, a plan of renewal and development of the central and suburban organization matured inside the Group, in order to re-instate the portfolios decimated by wartime inflation. This was followed, starting in 1953, by a new expansion on the foreign market. Among the most important subsequent company turning points we can mention the unification of La Reale Grandine and La Fondiaria infortune with the La Fondiaria incendio (1972). This concentration process culminated on 11 July 1980 when, with an extraordinary General Meeting, the merger was established of La Fondiaria incendio within La Fondiaria Vita, thus constituting La Fondiaria Compagnia di Assicurazioni e Reiassicurazioni S.p.A. .

Over the course of the 1980s, the Group considerably enlarged its subdivision with the control of the Banca Mercantile Italiana, CARD and GEAS Assicurazioni, Gruppo Milano Assicurazioni (which included Italia Assicurazioni), and in 1991, Gruppo Latina Assicurazioni.

In 2002 La Fondiaria Assicurazioni was incorporated into SAI – Società Assicuratrice Industriale, and Fondiaria-SAI was born.

In 2012, Unipol Gruppo Finanziari took over control of Fondiaria-SAI, thus contributing to creating – with its staff and with its clients – one of the most important insurance and financial Groups operating in Italy and, for size, among the foremost in Europe.