“Last a lifetime” has been the advertising slogan of the large Cologne private insurance company DKV for decades. The brand has already expired. In the fall of 2027, the insurer will be perceived externally as part of the Ergo umbrella brand. Frauke Figl, CEO of DKV, counters the emerging fears among customers and employees: “The quality, tradition and values that our DKV brand stands for will continue to guide us in the future.” The new brand image will not have an impact on jobs or wages. “Apart from the new external image under the Ergo brand, everything remains unchanged for our customers,” she explains to our editors. The IT infrastructure also remains independent.
“No intermediate step to merger”
Residents of Cologne will have to get used to this. Next year they will read other inscriptions on the DKV building on Achenerstrasse. Promotional materials, websites and customer applications are gradually changing from DKV green to Ergo red. It is not yet clear what exactly the insurer will be called in the future. Because Ergo health insurance already exists. The former company Ergo Direkt, based in Nuremberg, is already closely linked to DKV. The board of directors of both companies is identical, and product management has long been unified. Now these two brands are also similar. Will a merger be next? And here Feigl weighs in: “Co-branding between two health insurance companies is not an intermediate step toward a merger.” Both companies have different directions and target groups.
Frauke Figl, CEO of DKV and Ergo health insurance
Copyright: DKV
Ergo has been consistently investing in the umbrella brand for many years. A promotional partnership with the DFB that is sure to be worth millions was recently extended until 2030. The Düsseldorf-based insurance company is also involved in professional football internationally, for example as the insurance partner of Lionel Messi’s American club Inter Miami. “We hope that after the brand reorganization in autumn 2027, our DKV customers will say when they watch football: I’m covered too,” said Figl. DKV has been part of the Ergo Group since 2008. However, many clients do not yet know about this, the company claims.
Cologne’s identity must be preserved
Marc Klein, Ergo Group’s chief digital officer, justified the decision to drop the DVK brand by saying the merger would “unleash synergies” and “improve efficiencies.” DKV companies in Belgium and Spain are also changing their flags. “Local power becomes global power,” Klein says. Does this also mean that the local, Cologne identity is disappearing?
Of course, Frauke Figl sees it differently. “We remain closely connected to Cologne and stick to our location,” she says. However, she admits that the renaming of the team has caused sadness among some colleagues. “The mood among employees is mixed, but the general mood is very positive. Some people may look more at past successes that we want to build on. But many also see that the situation has therefore changed and that now is a good time to take this step.”
It’s also good timing because it’s becoming increasingly difficult for smaller brands to make a name for themselves in a world where artificial intelligence is increasingly being pushed between insurers and customers. “Where yesterday there was a classic search engine, today consumers receive information using language models supported by artificial intelligence. This makes it even more important that the brand is clearly positioned and discoverable,” says Figl. For example, for AI systems that rely more heavily on rankings and recommendations in the trade press, brands have to position themselves differently than they did a few years ago, when optimizing for keyword combinations for search engines was still popular.
Consequently, with the new head of marketing
Ergo Group recently expanded its staff for this purpose and hired Nina Mikahelles, a marketing expert from Google’s AI group. Her tasks will include further promoting Ergo as a health brand.
In the region, the Cologne insurance company will continue to act as sponsor under a changed logo. Since the end of the DKV brand coincides with the 100th anniversary of the company’s founding, the question ultimately arises of how the anniversary will be celebrated shortly before the funeral. “It is important that we find a way to show respect and appreciation for the past and work of our employees,” Figl says. “There will be this moment.” As you can read between the lines, this will no longer take place in the form of a public event. This will happen in the fall of 2027, when the rebranding will be celebrated.