The history

Gjensidigestiftelsen is founded on 200 years of insurance history. Both ownership and grants allocations originate from the fire insurance companies that were established at the beginning of the 19th century.

Early in the 19th century, the first fire insurance companies were established as an insurance scheme in Norway, and as early as 1858 the fire companies began to give part of their profits to preventive measures in the local community.

From fire boxes to foundations

In 2007, Gjensidigefondet was established with guidelines for distributions. In the autumn of the same year, Gjensidigestiftelsen was established as a general foundation with the same purpose as the fund. In connection with the stock market listing of Gjensidige Forsikring in 2010, the foundation was transformed into a financial foundation and thus took on more tasks. Until 2010, Gjensidige had been a customer-owned company, and through the IPO, the ownership and customer representation was continued through the Gjensidige Foundation.

After the stock market listing of Gjensidige in 2010, the Gjensidige Foundation today owns approximately 62.24% of the shares in Gjensidige.

Gjensidigestiftelsen’s financial purpose is to manage the long-term ownership in Gjensidige, to pass on its share of dividends to Gjensidige’s non-life insurance customers and to manage the capital income from the distribution sale in Gjensidige. As of December 2021, Gjensidigestiftelsen has NOK 31.4 billion under management distributed across various asset classes in a global, diversified investment portfolio. It is the surplus from the investment portfolio that is used when the foundation distributes funds for socially beneficial purposes, such as the gift of NOK 350 million for increased fire preparedness that was given in connection with Gjensidige’s 200th anniversary in 2016.