(Bloomberg) -- Zurich Insurance Group AG, Switzerland’s largest insurer, is shrinking office space at a key unit and will ask staff to share desks to help reverse a drop in earnings.
The steps are needed to help the firm lower the combined ratio, or losses and operating expenses as a proportion of premiums, by 2 to 3 percentage points by the end of 2016, said Mike Kerner, who heads the general insurance unit. The ratio, a key performance indicator, was 97.3% last year.
“We aim to have fewer desks than we have people,” Kerner, 49, said in an interview in Zurich. “People sit in meetings quite a lot, they travel quite a lot, they’re on holiday, they’re on sick leave. You don’t need a desk per person. You need a flexible working environment.”
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