Allianz and Axa have retained placements in Interbrand’s latest global rankings, which lists the top 100 most valuable brands. 

Axa ranked at 44 as its brand valuation rose 4% to $US16.4 billion ($24.9 billion), closely ahead of Audi, Airbnb, Porsche, Starbucks, General Electric and Volkswagen.  

Allianz rose three spots to 31st place, with a valuation up 12% at $US20.85 billion ($31.67 billion) – ahead of closely-ranked Hyundai, UPS, Gucci, Pepsi, Sony, Visa, Salesforce, Netflix and PayPal. 

"Allianz is looking beyond the insurance industry and aims to compete with the world’s most valuable brands,” Interbrand said. “The role of brand goes beyond marketing to become a valuable part of business strategy.” 

Interbrand says the past 12 months have shown that Allianz is “very successful at integrating strategies that can be learned from these leading global players and that the trust of their customer base is strong enough to follow through”.  

Allianz has the capability to “not only compare itself with other insurance companies, but also learn from the leading global brands,” it says. “Allianz's superpower is to put the brand itself at the forefront, allowing for the strategic expansion of the core business in areas beyond their core category.” 

Allianz first entered the top 100 in 2007 and aspires to be a top 25 brand. 

Interbrand says as a business that mainly sells financial security through "intangible complex products”, it can be difficult for insurers to create experiences that foster this level of trust. 

Allianz stadiums, its global partnership with the Olympic and Paralympic Movements, and many other culturally relevant organisations that customers identify with have enabled the brand to be perceived in a much more tangible way, leading to high performance, it says. 

“Achieving brand value growth of +11.5% in a challenging environment is an incredible achievement that our employees, agents and brokers can be proud of," Global Head of Brand & Marketing Christian Deuringer said. 

In March, Allianz bundled its Mid-Corporate and Large-Corporate insurance businesses under the newly created Allianz Commercial.  

“With this move, the German headquartered insurance-giant follows a strategy that is shared among the leading global brands, aiming to simplify B2B brand experiences and learning from the successes of the consumer side of the business.” 

The total value of the Best Global Brands increased 6% in 2023, after surging 16% in 2022. The top three global ranking spots were again taken out by Apple, Microsoft and Amazon.