LähiTapiola
[1] LähiTapiola is a group company owned by its customers, serving private, farm, entrepreneur, corporate and community clients.
The history of Lähivakuutus starts from 1770, when king Adolf Frederick of Sweden enacted a law to found fire control groups in towns.
The supervisory boards of the companies signed the foundation contract of LähiTapiola and the fusion was accepted by the corporate meetings in May 2012.
The Tapiola group was a centralised, professionally led company, where the CEO at the time Asmo Kalpala had a great deal of power.
On the other hand, Lähivakuutus had distributed management, where the power lay in independent insurance companies in the Finnish regions, acting in an agile and professional manner.
The birth of LähiTapiola was the responsibility of Kalpala, Moisander and the chairman of the board of Lähivakuutus, Ralf Wikström.
In the negotiations, Lähivakuutus had a good position, as it did not need the fusion as much as the Tapiola Bank which had lost part of its market share.
[8] The Tapiola Bank and the S-Bank announced their fusion on 6 June 2013 as a part of a larger collaboration between the S Group and LähiTapiola.
[9] Moisander managed to form a common corporate culture by treating everyone equally and through interaction and discussions.
On the other hand, Tapiola brought a great deal of new business: life insurance, banking, re-insurance and internationalisation.
The total sum of client funds controlled by LähiTapiola was 9.7 billion euro, and its associates included the S-Bank, Elo and Pihlajalinna.
[12] In January 2017 LähiTapiola announced it would renew its strategy by diminishing its role as an insurance company and making life support into its core function.
[16] After Moisander retired in late 2019 Juha Koponen was chosen as his successor, and he started as the company's directory in 2020.
In 2019 LähiTapiola Varainhoito was awarded best provider of responsive investments for the fifth time in seven years in a survey for institution investors conducted by SFR Research.
