Travel insurance provider Access America will be renamed Allianz Travel Insurance, as part of its parent company's global rebranding, which is expected to be completed in late 2012.
Access is a subsidiary of Mondial Assistance USA, which is being renamed Allianz Global Assistance after German parent company Allianz, the world's 20th-largest public company, according to Forbes.
With both Mondial and Access taking the new names, all of the Allianz travel insurance companies will share its brand.
Allianz Global Assistance insured 13 million people in 2011, mostly with travel insurance and event ticket-protection plans.
The company said that it is the nation's largest travel insurance and assistance company.
Beth Godlin, recently promoted to president and CEO of Allianz Global Assistance, said that the global strength of the Allianz brand would be "quite important to people seeking to either partner with insurance companies or buy insurance products."
She also said, "Having a global brand that is the same in 28 countries allows us to really capitalize and better explain to our customer the background that we have and the group we belong to."
Allianz said that recognition of its brand has been growing among Americans. The insurer launched a national brand-awareness campaign in 2010 to highlight core areas of all of its businesses in the U.S.
Godlin said that Access America products "won't change at all," except in name.
"We are the same management, the same products, the same technology," she said. "What's most important is that people know we are taking on our parent company's brand, but that does not change who we are. All that's changing is our name."
Allianz sells it insurance products almost exclusively through suppliers and travel agents.
Godlin said the company doubled its business twice in the last decade and attributed the growth to the introduction of technology solutions that make selling and managing the products easier and to the opening of new channels of distribution for travel insurance.
In addition, she said, there is more awareness of travel insurance products.
"Starting in 2010, the number of what the industry calls catastrophic events that are created by weather and other types of issues really did increase substantially," she said.
Along with Godlin's recent promotion, Jonathan Ansell, the former president and CEO of the U.S. and the Americas zone, will take on the role of chairman.
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