History
The story of HanseMerkur
HanseMerkur began in 1875 in Stellingen, then a village outside Hamburg, where nine men founded a sickness and burial fund for the workers of the local leather factories and workshops. It called itself "the support of the sick" and was a private self-help fund. In 1931 it began working with the Hanseatische Ersatzkasse and took the name Hanseatische Krankenversicherung von 1875; from 1940 the name "Merkur" came in after it took over the Merkur Ersatzkasse in Nuremberg. A merger with Hanse-Krankenschutz in 1969 created the Hanse-Merkur Krankenversicherung, which then grew into a group with life insurance from 1972, general insurance from 1974 and travel insurance. The name has been spelt HanseMerkur since 2000. In 2008 the mutual founded HanseMerkur Krankenversicherung AG and transferred its health insurance business to it. In 2025 the company insured 334,332 people with full cover, and the whole group took €3.33 billion in premiums with 1,847 employees.
