About Us
Europ Assistance USA (EA) is the US branch of Europ Assistance. Europ Assistance began helping travelers with emergencies in 1963 and has expanded in capabilities and services ever since. Professionally organized, thoroughly equipped with countless resources, Europ Assistance is dedicated to helping people in both exceptional and everyday situations, anytime, anywhere.
Ownership
Generali Assicurazioni, a Global 500 company, wholly owns Europ Assistance. Generali is one of the largest insurance companies in the world, with assets totaling more than 100 billion dollars. This prestigious shareholder gives Europ Assistance the benefit of stable and long-term investment potential. Generali considers assistance services essential and uses them extensively to enhance its own products.
An Ambitious Strategy
Europ Assistance is working to become the world leader of its sector by 2010 to better serve its customers throughout the world. To succeed in this new stage of its development, Europ Assistance is investigating global trends in depth and anticipating changes in lifestyle. Today Europ Assistance is responding to high-potential new needs associated with the demographical and social changes of the twenty-first century: medical assistance and domestic assistance as well as assistance for the family. Inspired by its legacy of innovation, Europ Assistance is building the foundations of modern assistance.
Innovating Assistance Services
To attain its goals, Europ Assistance needs to be the most innovative and high performing player of its sector, both in terms of quality of service as well as in growth and profitability. By focusing development on assistance in daily life, the Group is naturally extending its business into fields that are complementary to its historic activity of travel, while responding to the growing demand of its customers throughout the world: to be supported in everyday situations, from the most exceptional to the most routine.
The Idea
Europ Assistance was founded in 1963 by Pierre Desnos, who conceived the idea following the misfortunes of two friends who had been victims of an accident abroad. At the time, no organization guaranteed assistance to travelers. With the financial backing of André Rosa, the Chairman of Concorde Insurance Company, Desnos created Europ Assistance in Paris. The company offered a new type of service: not a reimbursement or the promise of indemnity, but immediate assistance adapted to meet the needs of people in every conceivable difficulty. Europ Assistance set out to change the world with multilingual switchboard attendants, a medical team, agents in 17 countries, a dozen permanent employees, but limited means and little credibility. During the very first year however, several lives were saved and 163 assistance operations were performed.
EA Offices History
The first Europ Assistance branch office abroad opened in Belgium in 1964. Several other offices followed.
Due to the importance of the American and Canadian market, Europ Assistance Worldwide Services was created in 1982.
1983 saw the creation of travel advice and information services dealing with all matters of everyday occurrences. Here EA started an evolutionary process that all assistance companies experienced in subsequent years: services were no longer linked to travel.
In 2003, Europ Assistance celebrated its 40th birthday! The Group now included 32 companies, as seven new companies had been opened that year: Europ Assistance was now present in the four Scandinavian countries as well as in Algeria, Libya and Japan.
2004 - Europ Assistance put together a new and ambitious strategy with the aim of becoming the world leader of modern assistance services. To achieve this, the Group had based its analysis on 80 growth areas and 50 countries, enabling it to define the main lines for its international development and reorganize the management of its activities around four sectors: its two historic sectors - travel and automobile- and two new sectors - domestic assistance and personal assistance.
Putting together this new strategy led Europ Assistance to optimize its organizational structure. Four regions were defined to enable more efficient management and better distribution of best practices. A Group Medical Committee with international competence was also created to anticipate, coordinate and supply an expertise in medical issues on an international scale.
But 2004 was also marked by tragedy with the tsunami disaster in December in Southeast Asia. Europ Assistance immediately set up a dedicated emergency committee, sent several medical teams, repatriated more than 900 able-bodied people and chartered around 15 aircraft for transferring the wounded to safe areas.
In 2005, the Group's new strategic plan starts being implemented. Europ Assistance also continues its development on a global basis with the creation of a new company in Chile and the acquisition of a license to develop its activity on the Chinese marketplace.
In 2006, Europ Assistance expanded to Canada with the purchase of the Canadian Medical Network.
