Talanx’s HDI says goodbye to ‘an absolute expert’; unveils board changes

European insurance group  Talanx has unveiled numerous changes to the board of management of HDI Germany, a move that follows a key member’s decision to step down from all positions due to “personal reasons”.

Iris Kremers (pictured, left) will hand over her board positions at HDI Germany “at her own request” to Holm Diez (pictured, centre) with effect from July 01, 2022. The move comes for personal reasons as part of her life plans to spend more time on activities outside the business and with her family, HDI said.

Kremers is currently the board of management member at HDI Deutschland AG responsible for bancassurance, which comprises neue leben insurers, PB insurers, TARGO insurers and LifeStyle Protection insurers. She was appointed to the boards of management of the  Talanx subsidiaries in 2007, and has chaired them for more than a decade.

Having joined the company’s bancassurance business in 1997, she went on to hold a number of management positions at national and international level, including strategic project management, strategic development and Internet IT systems. She was appointed to the board of management of HDI Germany in 2010.

Kremers will stay on with the group as a supervisory board member, offering bancassurance expertise to HDI Germany. She will remain a supervisory board member of Lifestyle Protection AG and Lifestyle Protection Lebensversicherung AG. Starting January 2023, she will also succeed Norbert Kox on the supervisory board of HDI Deutschland AG.

Diez, Kremers’ successor on HDI Germany’s board of management, will also become chairman of the boards of management of neue leben insurers. In addition, he will become a member and chairman of the boards of management of PB insurers and TARGO insurers.

Diez has been the board of management member responsible for sales at the neue leben companies since 2017. Before that, he worked as a management consultant in a number of functions in the financial services area, ending up with responsibility for the insurance and real estate business at one of Germany’s largest savings banks.

The new head of sales at neue leben will be Evi Popp (pictured, right). She will be appointed as an authorised representative with effect from August 01, 2022. At the beginning of 2023, she will be appointed as a member of the boards of management of neue leben Holding AG, neue leben Lebensversicherung AG, neue leben Unfallversicherung AG and neue leben Pensionskasse AG.

Popp comes from Kreissparkasse Heilbronn, where she is director of private and retail customers. The certified savings bank economist has extensive experience of the savings banks sector, where she has worked for 26 years, largely in management. Past positions were in the retail and private clients area and as a managing director in the international corporates business serving a number of savings banks.

The appointments are subject to approval by the German supervisory authority BaFin.

Torsten Leue, chairman of the board of management of  Talanx AG and chairman of the supervisory board of HDI Deutschland AG, thanked Kremers for her “extraordinarily successful work” at HDI Germany’s bancassurance operations and paid tribute to her achievements in turning the  Talanx Group’s banking partnerships “into an engine of the Retail Germany business’s success” over the past two decades.

“We are saying goodbye to an absolute expert in bancassurance on our boards of management,” said Christopher Lohmann, the member of the board of  Talanx AG responsible for the division, and chairman of the board of HDI Deutschland AG.

“Iris Kremers successfully expanded the cooperation with our banking partners, making us one of the most important bancassurance players in Germany. I am very grateful to her for this.”

Lohmann added: “Holm Diez is an ideal successor. He brings extensive experience of both bancassurance and the HDI Group. In the past five years, Holm Diez’s innovative ideas in the sales, technology and human resources areas have allowed neue leben to move forward decisively. We are convinced that he will continue the bancassurance area’s success.

“Evi Popp is another great asset who is joining us from the savings bank organisation. She is both a sales expert and someone who can shape the business – just the right mix to maintain and expand neue leben’s existing success. I wish both of them a great start and every success in their new positions.”

Did you get value from this story? Sign up to our free daily newsletters and get stories like this sent straight to your inbox.