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 In
January 2000, after Daimler-Benz merged with Chrysler, it closed
its New York beachhead and headed to a suburb of Detroit. Christiane
Fischer, then General Manager of both Corporate Information and
Reporting for Daimler’s North American operations, opted not
to move.
Her husband, Bernhard Harling, was based in New York; her three
daughters (now 12, 11, and seven) were ensconced in school here,
and since she first visited the Big Apple in October 1988 on a business
trip for Daimler Benz, she has been in love with the town, enthralled
by its intensity, energy, dynamics, optimism, people, and mode of
transportation.
So she moved to AXA Art Insurance Corp, first as Director of Communications
and COO and then, in January 2004, as CEO, in a job that combines
her passion for art and figures. “I’ve always loved
beautiful objects and numbers: being involved with them from a business
and risk management point, combining left brain/right brain, is
near heaven,” she says.
“Heavenly” is also how her childhood sounds. She was
born and raised in a pretty village in rural Germany, where her
mother was a homemaker, caring for two older brothers and Fischer,
and a keen gardener, who surrounded the family with huge flower
and vegetable gardens and orchards. Fischer can’t recall eating
a store-bought fruit or vegetable in her entire youth. Her father,
an engineer, worked for a large American heavy equipment and machinery
manufacturer. His career took him all around the world, often for
long periods. “I was fascinated by his travels and could not
wait for him to return and share with me the wonders of those far
away places,” she says. Her whole family competed in athletics:
from early on Fischer was a gymnastics and field and track star.
(Her parents had met on the track field and subsequently formed
a field and track club for their community.)
After receiving her Abitur (or international baccalaureate), she
completed a program as foreign language correspondent in Mainz and
began her career in the customer service unit of Bank of America
in Frankfurt before moving to Daimler. She came to the US in 1989,
when she was 24, after working in the finance department of Daimler-Benz
in Stuttgart, and after a year at Mercedes in New Jersey moved to
Daimler in New York. While holding down her day job, Fischer studied
economics and marketing at NYU for three years.
 Kids
Change Everything
That hectic pace culminated when she had her first daughter; another
followed 13 months later. Something had to give and it was school,
she says. “Suddenly the focus changed from me to them.”
Fischer admits that it has been challenging “not to allow
myself to be totally absorbed by my children” and considers
her greatest accomplishment to be succeeding as a full-time working
mother with three equally happy daughters. She shares her work with
her children whenever possible and talks to them about it and what
it means to her. But when they have a competitive soccer game at
3 PM on a Friday afternoon, she is there. “Thank God we now
have cell-phones, Blackberries, laptops, the technology that allows
me to live my life more on my own terms. I can have that special
moment with one of my children and still be reachable and do the
rest of my work at night or whenever I wish.” Technology has
also been a godsend, connecting her to her husband who moved to
Atlanta two years ago to run public relations for Porsche and who
returns home most weekends. “Handling complicated logistics
and careful planning are crucial to our family and work lives,”
adds Fischer, who estimates that she travels almost 40% of her work-time
to Axa Art offices in Chicago, Beverly Hills, Dallas, Atlanta, Boston
and to Europe to meet with the 30 members of her staff, clients
and overseas colleagues.
Analyzing Risk
When in New York, she rises at 5:30 to have breakfast and read
the paper in her Long Island City home. (Her live-in au pair walks
the two dogs.) By 7:15 she is heading toward the subway with her
girls, they for school and she for the office. (Most evenings she
entertains or attends art events, but weekends are reserved for
family.) By 8 AM Fischer has usually made her way through the barrage
of emails and voicemails and is on her way to a meeting or immersed
in reviewing a large risk offering. In a year she’ll personally
sign off on some 600 insurance policies of very high value. Roughly
55 percent of clients are private collectors; 20 percent museums,
15 percent exhibitions and the rest, private dealers and galleries.
Three out of five policies she green-lights immediately. For the
rest she’ll discuss the premium with the underwriter —all
before a customer sees a policy—and more often than not ratchet
up the premium. Sometimes she’ll call for a location-inspection.
Because of the threat of earthquakes, California policies tend to
cost most; the threat of terrorism in New York pushes up insurance
policy prices here.
People Who Made a Difference
Competitors like Chubb and AIG have a bit of an advantage in being
able to offer home owners’ insurance and to “package”
their offerings. To counter that, AXA positions itself as a specialist
with more flexibility in tailoring custom-made solutions to address
clients’ issues. Obviously this has worked for the $31 million
AXA US boutique unit that Fischer runs, which has grown 10 percent
in each of the past several years. With plans to expand into Canada
and add product offerings such as insurance for jewelry, rugs and
furs, collectibles, antiques, wine cellars, musical instruments,
photographic equipment and theatrical props, she expects to run
a $50 million unit by 2010.
While she’s had many mentors in her life, starting with a
history and German teacher who nurtured her love for reading, Fischer
was most influenced by her father. Her mother’s example taught
her the importance of nurturing family, but her dad taught her determination
and persistency and that “no is never an option.” Like
him, she cannot sit still and do nothing. “There is always
another project to start and pour energy into, something to discover,
try out, challenge, accomplish.” She loves turning ideas into
reality and savors having the autonomy to act. “I don’t
do well when someone watches over my shoulder,” she says.
Fischer also loves getting involved in settling claims, deciding
how to proceed, and mapping the claims negotiation process. Having
no ego is handy here, dealing with a lot of “personalities,”
successful, rich people with large amounts of ego, she says. “I
try to remain focused on the issue, calm and factual.” Payouts
for Katrina went smoothly, but twice in the last few years she’s
been in the middle of two large cases of fraud.
Fischer revels in the now, occasionally regretting that she hasn’t
had a fourth child. As for the future: she fantasizes playing the
saxophone in clubs around NYC. And why not? If Mick Jagger can swagger
around at 62?
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