Chief Strategy Officer’s review

Leona Murphy
Chief Strategy Officer
The steps we are taking will help us realise our ambition to be the world’s most respected group of general insurance companies. Our relentless focus on executing our strategy and delivering a consistent performance is part of this. We believe great strides can also be made by sharing our expertise in risk, because risk matters not only to our business, it matters to our economy, our communities and our way of life.

Enabling and protecting today

We have made significant progress and delivered improved results since we reset our strategic priorities. We are taking steps to protect this momentum, through effective governance and risk management, and by ensuring we have the people and capability we need.

We have a robust governance framework that guides our internal monitoring and reporting processes. Our approach to managing risk is outlined in detail in the Corporate Governance report on pages 9–10 of the 2012 annual report.

We also have programmes to identify and develop talented people throughout the organisation, enabling us to harness and leverage skills and expertise. We have succession plans for critical roles and we are building a more mobile workforce to enable us to fulfil our Asian ambitions and offer our people diverse experiences.

Shaping tomorrow

However, to achieve our ambition, we must look beyond today for ways to deliver benefits to a range of stakeholders.

As leaders in our industry, we are passionate about helping people manage risk, and recover from the hardship of unexpected loss. Through our Risk Matters programme we are channelling this passion into action.

As foreshadowed in last year’s annual review, we recently brought together representatives from community, government and business groups to work with us to determine which areas of risk we should focus on and the actions we should take to help communities understand, prevent, reduce or better insure the risks they face.

As a result, we are focusing on risks in the home, on the road, in business and in the natural environment and have set as priorities:

■ raising awareness of, and providing education about, risks such as fires and poor driver behaviour that affect individuals;

■ helping small-to-medium sized businesses identify risks they face and how to reduce these through mitigation and risk management strategies; and

■ advocating increased investment in mitigation strategies, including improved data and appropriate building codes, to overcome risks in the environment.

Reducing risk in the community will help keep insurance more affordable and accessible for all.