(Bloomberg) – Zurich Insurance AG's new chief executive officer, Mario Greco, is shaking up the largest Swiss insurer after an unexpected jump in claims last year forced it to abandon a takeover and prompted his predecessor's exit.

Zurich is merging its biggest units, global life and general insurance, and reorganizing along geographical lines. The four regional heads —  for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, North America, Latin America and Asia Pacific — will report directly to Greco. The company's business with its global corporate clients with remain in a separate division.

More efficient

"This structure is more efficient than the previous one," Greco, 56, said on a conference call with reporters on Friday. "There will be a contribution to cost savings, but we need to quantify that precisely and we're not ready to do that today."

Greco took over at Zurich in March after three years running Italy's largest insurer, Assicurazioni Generali SpA. Martin Senn, who beat out Greco for the top job at Zurich in 2012, stepped down in December after unexpectedly high claims in the general-insurance unit led the company to scrap a takeover bid for RSA Insurance Group Plc. Senn committed suicide last month.

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