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In 1858 Helvetia was established by Eastern Swiss business people and entrepreneurs as Allgemeine Versicherungs-Gesellschaft Helvetia in St Gallen. It was the first company in Switzerland to offer an insurance against risks of transport by land, river and sea. Three years later, an own private fire insurance company was established in St Gallen called Helvetia Feuer. The occasion was the fire of Glarus, which revealed shortcomings in the building insurance system.Over the course of its history, Helvetia expanded into all five continents and thereby laid the foundation for its business activities outside of Switzerland. In 1862 Helvetia Feuer established its first branches in Germany and expanded from 1876 into the US, where it opened branches in California and New York. Between 1920 and 1962 further Helvetia subsidiaries were set up in France, Italy, Greece , the Netherlands and Canada . In Austria the history of Helvetia goes back to the establishment of Der Anker, Gesellschaft von Lebens- und Rentenversicherung in 1858. Until 2006, Helvetia Austria also operated under this name. The establishment of subsidiaries in Spain, Italy and Germany took place between 1986 and 1988.
In 1968 Allgemeine Versicherungs-Gesellschaft Helvetia merged with Helvetia Unfall and Helvetia Leben. The medium-sized insurance group has offered the entire product range in life and non-life insurance since then. In 1974 Helvetia Feuer and Helvetia Allgemeine merged to form Helvetia Feuer. On 11 October 1988 the shareholders decided in an extraordinary general meeting of Helvetia Feuer and Helvetia Unfall to separate the two partner companies in full. Helvetia Unfall took the name Elvia , which it subsidiary active as a reinsurer already had. Helvetia Feuer was renamed as Helvetia Versicherungen and given a new mission statement and branding. The three-dimensional triangular symbol was introduced.
