GF Insurance was founded in a different time –1967 –when Denmark was a different country than today.

Ownership of a car was a luxury item for the rapidly growing middle class who needed to be insured well and cheaply. In that context, GF or as it is translated in English, “Group Insurance” – emerged as a grassroots movement that sought to ease the financial burden for thousands of Danes so they could create a good life for themselves with security for their own car and their own home.

So, consumers took part in the ownership of GF Forsikring and became members who therefore got a share of the profits.

Since then, both GF Forsikring and Denmark have changed drastically. Many of our first “GF drivers” have now passed away, but their children and grandchildren are now happy to be members of GF Forsikring.

Our range of products has since expanded from car insurance and now includes all forms of private insurance products, and today we also insure members’ businesses.

Yet our company purpose – our business idea – of a member-owned company working in the service of our members – importantly remains the same.

We do our upmost in servicing and helping our members. They like us, they are loyal to us, and they recommend us to others. That is a central part of being a mutual company.

And in all humbleness, GF Forsikring is quite successful in doing this.

We have an organic growth rate around 7-10 percent annually. Where other companies close their local offices, we open new ones in all corners of our small, but geographically extensive country.

We seek to combine local proximity with the nationwide security that being a large company in the Danish market brings. And in 2023, we adopted a new business strategy that will increase our premium portfolio by 50 percent in 2028.

The 2020s call for accessible and mutual alternatives to the large shareholder-owned companies in a fiercely competitive market.

My post could well stop here: It sounds like a fairy tale. Written by a satisfied CCO here in the famous Danish author Hans Christian Andersen’s childhood town, Odense, where GF Forsikring is based.

But as in real fairy tales, there are things we must pay attention to:

How do we handle the digital development? How do we both preserve and develop our member democracy in a financial industry which is characterised by ever-increasing complexity and legislation? How do we attract the right employees and how do we ensure that the young generation – who are more global and digital than ever before – get to know us?

How do we develop and strengthen our value proposition for the new generation?

At GF Forsikring we have chosen – based on strong business analysis – to collate our answers to these questions in our “GF in motion” strategy, which is also supported by a new ownership strategy.

All frameworks, roles and direction have been redefined. This is not a walk in the park. It is a long journey, filled with difficult dilemmas.

However progress requires patience, mutual trust and openness.

As modern business executives, it is important to keep a strong focus on our legacy. Our grassroots. We have the obligation – and gift – to continue developing the mutual business model.

At GF Forsikring, we have high hopes and expectations to develop ourselves and our own organisation. But we know that development and growth happens in collaboration with others. We are not the only one that acts and thinks commercially with deep and continuous respect for our DNA. The key to progress is always having the interests of the members, our end-users, as our main focus.

For us, the goal is simply to create value for our members. And the members of our commercial partners. In Danish we call it “Overskud til hinanden” (sharing with each other).

That is why we cultivate commercial partnerships that create added value for each other’s members.

For me, as Commercial Director of GF Forsikring, thinking about people (members) and thinking commercially are two sides of the same coin. And it is precisely the same motivation that drives our member-elected representatives around the 31 insurance clubs, which we refer to as our ownership circle.

We all share the same desire to create value for all our members using the right balance between local democracy and a profound commercial business strategy.

So we are well on our way into an even brighter future.

I would be delighted to hear from other ICMIF members who have good advice or point of views for us where we could exchange ideas and best-practice to help our efforts to ensure a strong, open, member-owned alternative for the Danish consumers of the future.

If you would like an introduction to Martin to discuss these ideas further, please contact Vicky Hughes, Vice-President, Membership, ICMIF.