Our culture

Our corporate culture is like the soul of our company. It is a decisive element in the building of our brand and in our identity itself. As a family-run company, Funk can look back on around 140 years of success, strongly shaped by our culture which has left its indelible marks on us. Our corporate culture is firmly rooted in the following principles.


Maintaining Funk as a family-run company

Funk has been a family-run company since 1879 and is now in its fifth generation. Its history is closely linked with the straightforwardness and integrity of its owners and their entrepreneurial desire for independence.

With their expertise, motivation and ability to take the human element into account, Funk’s owners have contributed significantly to the company’s continuous success. We want to keep Funk this way and continue to develop along these lines. In doing so, we enable the motivated, capable members of all of our owner families as directors or shareholders to make guiding Funk’s expertise their life’s work even in the coming generation.

Even if the majority of Funk’s shares are held by members of the Funk family, we traditionally do follow the principle of ceding shares to members of other families that have made and can make outstanding contributions to the maintenance and well-being of the family-run company. We want to keep the character of a family-run company as is typical for Funk and protect our independence.

We want to call on excellent insurance specialists and managers to join the management of our companies – people who identify with the brand and who, with their personality, suitability, training and experience, ensure that Funk realises its company objectives as best as possible. We plan the transitions from one to the next generation of managers in the long term and implement them early in order to maintain clarity, strength and stability in the company’s development even during these transition periods.

 


Generating profits

Generating profits ensures the future for everyone at Funk. First and foremost, we see this as our duty. We want to have as much profit as possible in order to gain the financial strength we need, especially to cover fair salaries for employees, our future investments and the implementation of the other aims given here.


Keeping our employees in work

Assuring successful company development is closely linked to long-term job security for our employees. We cultivate a trust-based partnership with our employees and the works councils elected by them.

We ensure the well-being of our employees and their families with this approach, as well as with our willingness to pursue employment relationships that are designed to be long-term and with our notable lack of employment terminations. We reserve terminations for those individuals who no longer wish to do their part to ensure the company’s success, or no longer can do their part because of reasons caused by themselves, or who have seriously violated essential rules of conduct or whose conduct does not line up with company objectives, even when viewed in a lenient and forgiving light.

We commit ourselves to keeping jobs available for our employees even in times of illness, personal problems or temporary setbacks and thereby assuring their material livelihood in difficult personal circumstances, for as long as the company is in an economic position to do so. In these situations, we expect our employees to actively pursue a solution to their problems and not to close themselves to a temporary or long-term adjustment to their working conditions should their performance capability change in the long term.

If Funk ever finds itself in a position where it has to secure its survival by implementing extraordinary cost-cutting measures, we want to work with our employees and the works councils to achieve an even reduction in all salaries as a priority over making positions redundant.

 


Maintaining and expanding our market position

Assuring the future for Funk also means maintaining the market position we’ve achieved in changing circumstances and expanding it further for the future. We want to be a leading renowned German industrial insurance broker and risk consultant with an international orientation and a holistic approach to the service components of insurance management, pensions and risk management as a system house of risk solutions. We want to secure and build on our position as an independent company and maintain the quality of our services at the highest level.

In Germany we retain our traditional company structure with a balanced ratio of centralised and decentralised departments and divisions. The high density of our network of offices ensures flexible and local support for our clients, always focused on their needs. We support our offices centrally from Hamburg with top expert, sales and international expertise, our administrative capacities and our internal services.

We assure our global performance capability through our international Funk offices in Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Italy, Poland, Hungary, Romania and Shanghai as well as through Funk’s powerful international broker network, the Funk Alliance. With the Funk Alliance, we form an alliance of selected network partners with broker interests that line up perfectly with ours, based on partnership and independence. Either as Funk or as the Funk Alliance, our clients can find us anywhere and enjoy a high standard of professionalism and international service quality worldwide.

 


Our view of ourselves as market partners

We want to be motivated and competent, conscientious and reliable, fair and trustworthy market partners. We want to be a force to be reckoned with in a competitive market, with confidence and the clear will to succeed, but also with respect for our clients’ decisions and the performance of our competitors. We want to be fair, follow the law and general market rules, and we want to always be aware that our conduct on the way to success is also a decisive factor in our success itself. We want to be an innovative service provider that impresses our market partners with the quality of our expertise and our creativity, with timeliness, efficiency and good value for money, with reliability and earnestness and with our partnership. We want to use these qualities to make working with us an appealing prospect.


Our relationship with our clients

We want to foster and gain the trust of our clients by placing their requirements at the centre of our thoughts and actions and constantly aligning our company to the optimal solution for their risk problems.

We strive to cultivate long-term relationships with our clients. The satisfaction of our clients is the most important aim of all Funk employees. Supporting our clients therefore takes high priority. We are pleased when our clients treat us fairly.

Our success also depends on client relationships being fruitful for us. We therefore keep the cost-effectiveness of each client relationship in mind. We want to offer our clients special services but may need to charge a reasonable fee if necessary.

The acquisition of new clients is absolutely essential to our success. For this reason we are constantly seeking out new business opportunities and business fields according to plan. We are happy when satisfied clients recommend us to new contacts.

We recognise the diversity of the commercial world, with its classifications and objectives, and we do not judge these, but we do wish to work with companies that foster a comparable corporate culture to ours, which takes the human aspect into account. We do not wish to offer our services to companies that consciously promote or condone the violation of our life principles, the devaluation of human life or the destruction of the environment.

 


Employees at Funk

Funk only becomes a living organism through its employees. We want to offer our employees a professional home at Funk that brings them joy in their work and promotes both their material well-being and their personal growth.

We want to exemplify, practise, promote and demand the virtues that are essential to our success and our cooperation. We want to resolve conflict with clarity and decisiveness as well as with good intentions. We want to create sufficient space for the realisation of our employees’ capabilities and talents, whilst at the same time pointing out any problems so that we can turn these around.

We want to offer a basis for the personal development of our employees whilst at the same impressing on them the high personal requirements we set out in our company guidelines.

We want to set reasonable objectives for our employees and managers and provide them with clear organisational structures and powerful tools to achieve these.

We want to give high priority to further training and professional development at all levels, providing training places that go beyond what we need, and we want to intensively encourage our employees’ motivation and performance capabilities.

We want to create new jobs and promote flexible working hours within our commercial capabilities. We want to foster a motivating working environment for our employees and managers that encourages focus and concentration.

 


Our management style

We want to implement a management style of openness and clarity, reliability and human compassion at all management levels, giving each employee as much freedom as possible and as much guidance as necessary. We want to treat our employees with dignity and respect, establish expectations that are as reasonable as possible, regulate situations as little as possible, praise and reward good conduct and good performance, encourage fun in the workplace and share their load within reason, taking personal capabilities into account.

We promote and expect from our managers a strong commitment to these company guidelines and the objectives and actions derived from them, so that they can be good role models for all employees and make a significant contribution to Funk’s positive image.


Our principles of conduct

We want to strive more and more to make ‘giving’ and ‘serving’ the basis of our work attitude, especially towards our clients, our work colleagues and the company. We do this within our personal capabilities and without ‘bending over backwards’.

At Funk we want to harmonise our personal values and objectives with those of the company, implement the company guidelines and objectives as best as possible in real life and work together to continue developing them. We want Funk to have a consistent, human image at the same time.
We want to improve every day in every aspect. We especially want to be even more motivated, more creative, more competent, more team-oriented, more free, more open, more reliable, more fair, more tolerant and more trustworthy every day. We want to believe in our own strength and abilities and live our lives with joy. We want to have a positive attitude and eschew fears, worries and reservations. We want to take notice of our behaviour so we can learn from it.

We always want to strive to resolve everyday conflict with those around us in a balanced, partner-like way and with respect for the individuality of others. We will first investigate our own faults and our role in the conflict and resolve these before expecting others to change their behaviour. We want to conduct our business in as environmentally friendly a way as possible, use our natural resources sparingly and treat our immediate environment with care. We want to serve the desires of our clients, constantly learning and formulating plans in the process. We want to give our best and be happy in doing so, in order to secure our survival and that of the company, experience further personal growth and find fulfilment in what we do.

 


Your point of contact

Dr. Anja Funk-Münchmeyer Ansprechpartnerin bei Funk
Dr. Anja Funk-Münchmeyer
+49 40 35914-0
E-Mail-Contact