Projektarbeit aus dem Jahr 2009 im Fachbereich Wirtschaft – Bank, Börse, Versicherung, einseitig bedruckt, Note: -, Universität Bern, Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: Banks and insurance companies are both active in the financial market and even though their business models are quite different, it is obvious that they have a great deal in common. According to Voutilainen [7], laws of large numbers, economies of scale, liquidity creation, and risk management are common to both. Moreover, when you look at them through the eyes of a customer, you recognize that banks and in-surance companies are trying to sell you products how to invest your money. Of course, not only the customers but also the banks and insurers themselves figured out that they are active in a similar business and started to cooperate. For example, banks can sell their mortgages together with an insurance against an income reduc-tion due to a job loss. On the other hand, insurance companies know when a large amount of cash from an insurance policy is transferred to one of their customers so they can sell an appropriate investment solution in cooperation with a bank. The combination of banking and insuring is nothing new and Dinauer [4] says that it exists since the 14th century but there was an exceptional boom in their cooperation in the 90ies of the last century. Mergers and acquisitions between banking and insuring companies led to powerful firms, which were active in both business segments. A new business strategy in the financial market was born and became well known under the name bancassurance. The aim of this paper is to analyze the concept of bancassurance and to show how it affects the cooperation between banks and insurances. In a second step, the paper applies the concept on practice and focuses on the acquisition of the Winterthur insurance company by the Credit Suisse Group, which was intended to create a future large player in the bancassurance business.