Protektor Lebensversicherungs-AG

Protektor Lebensversicherungs-AG is the Guarantee Scheme of the German life insurers.

Protektor is a company designed to protect policyholders. The company protects policyholders against the consequences of a life insurance company going insolvent. The policies are maintained; pension payments and term coverage remain, as well as the share of profits already granted.

In May 2006 Protektor took on the tasks and powers of the statutory guarantee fund that had been established by law at the end of 2004. Since 2004, the portfolios of struggling life insurance companies have been transferred to this guarantee fund by the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority without exception and managed by Protektor.

Protektor acts on the basis of the status (in German language). According to them, the association’s duty is to rehabilitate the insurance portfolios of life insurance companies that are in trouble. To this end, the statutory guarantee fund takes on the policies of a failing company, rehabilitates its portfolios, manages the insurance business it takes over and passes them on to another company in full or in part. It does not rehabilitate companies that are going insolvent.

The shareholders behind Protektor Lebensversicherungs-AG are the life insurance companies organised under German law and financial supervision within the German Insurance Association (Gesamtverband der Deutschen Versicherungswirtschaft e.V., GDV). They founded Protektor as a rescue company in a private initiative in 2002. Pre-establishment of the statutory guarantee fund Protektor took over the portfolio of Mannheimer Lebensversicherung AG. After the rehabilitation of the portfolio Protektor managed the business over some years before it transferred the business to another life insurer in 2017.