Dress code change in insurance: tie or casual?

Clothes make the man. But clothes no longer define industries - not even those in finance. 40 years ago, hardly any banker would have dared to go to the office without a properly fitting suit. That's over now; things are more relaxed in the financial center of Frankfurt if the banker doesn't stay in his home office.

Sneakers, polo shirts and jeans combined with outdoor vests are not uncommon in the towers. A large direct bank based in the Main metropolis even once advertised for qualified young talent with the slogan "You can wear anything with us".

Now the financial world includes not only banks, but also insurance companies, and the latter maintain a fine distinction. Banks built upwards and insurance companies built outwards. That's true. A well-known German reinsurer has tunnelled under half a district in Munich. And the cultural change in clothing has not progressed that far in the insurance industry either.

You could say that the transformation is in full swing, and like every change, it brings with it problems. The New Year's reception of the Rhein-Main Insurance Club at the beginning of the month at the Frankfurt Stock Exchange made this clear. When the speakers took to the podium at around 10 a.m. after a champagne reception at 9.30 a.m., one of them expressed his uncertainty. "Tie or no tie. If there were a regulation on this, I would have saved myself 15 minutes in the wardrobe this morning," he told the guests present. Everyone who took to the podium did so with a tie. Among the guests, however, there was a roughly equal number of tie-wearers and tie-less ones.

However, there were few women in the room, and their share of participants was only in the high single-digit percentage range. This is also a sign that the insurance industry still has a long way to go. And there are more important issues than the question: tie or not?