On June 1, 2006, Thomas Hürlimann was appointed CEO, Zurich Global Corporate in Europe, after more than three years of working for Zurich Financial Services.

While doing his MBA at IMD in 1993, Thomas wanted to further develop and broaden his leadership skills and learn as much as possible from the school and from his class about other industries. He was considering the option of eventually leaving the banking world for a different industry.

However, after graduation, he took on the challenge to develop the Central Eastern European markets for a private bank, directly implementing some of the skills he had learnt at IMD. This was followed, two years later, by the opportunity to switch industries by joining the world of re-insurance.

“At Swiss Re I started off by running the corporate development unit. There I did a lot of strategic and M&A work, before being offered the position of managing the global insurance practice,” Thomas said. One of his clients at that time was Zurich Financial Services. Five years later, Thomas joined this client and accepted the job as Global Head of Group Reinsurance and was promoted to Chief Operating Officer for Zurich Global Corporate in 2005.

Reflecting on his career to date, Thomas feels that he has benefited a lot by having had the chance to see so many fields in the financial services sector. He moved from banking, where he had worked in M&A, treasury, trading and private banking to reinsurance. There he worked on the traditional and non-traditional reinsurance side as well as on the selling and purchasing side to move on to primary insurance for global corporate customers – and all in a global environment.

“Not only was IMD a fantastic experience,” Thomas said, “I genuinely believe that it developed my ability to work in a truly multi-cultural environment. I don’t think I would have had the sensitivity, awareness and understanding to deal with such different cultures without the IMD experience. It was a great lab. The pressure IMD requires you work under makes people’s true personalities come out and emphasizes the cultural backgrounds of the different nationalities represented – there were 31 in my class.”

This intense work environment created another element that Thomas has carried through in his career. “The many friendships I made all over the world are amazing. This summer for example my family and I spent vacation with four other IMD alumni and their families. Not a week goes by when I don’t have some kind of contact with a former classmate, either by phone, e-mail or in person. It’s a great network, but more importantly, the friendships made there are invaluable.”

Published: 2006