Roads to Resilience

The emphasis is on people taking responsibility and being accountable, but not being punished for making mistakes, provided they are open and honest and learn from them: “ The culture we are trying to instil in the company is that it is okay to make mistakes if they happen within the framework that the company has set. Then it is all about how you deal with them ” (CFO General Insurance). The push for openness is so strong that “ Good news travels fast but bad news travels faster, but whereas some companies have a culture of punishing bad news – we almost encourage it ” (CEO Global Life). The company culture is based on a set of values called ‘Zurich Basics’, covering integrity, teamwork, striving for excellence, being focused on the customer and sustainability which they believe drives sustainable performance and also should underpin behaviours. For example: “ Making money would not be an excuse for poor business practice: it is one test of the moral and commercial ethics of this business ” (Chief Actuary General Insurance). The support for these values is strong and consistent and “ If people don’t believe in the basics, then they need to find somewhere else not to believe in them! ” (CEO Global Life). Customer focus A key part of the culture is also the focus on customers. Zurich provides tools, such as ‘Zurich Risk Room’, which can be downloaded onto an iPad, to help customers understand and consider certain types of risk. This means that “ Our resilience is not only because we have a broad portfolio of risk but also because we help our customers become more resilient ” (Head of Sales, Distribution and Marketing Global Corporate, General Insurance). Zurich considers itself a ‘thought leader’ in risk management and this is a differentiator with some customers. “ We consider what sort of knowledge do we have that we can share with our customers from an enterprise risk perspective that can make them a better risk and that makes them less likely to suffer loss or if they do suffer loss to recover much easier … that allows customers to make better risk decisions ” (Head of Sales, Distribution and Marketing Global Corporate, General Insurance). “ Because we sell trust, we usually get a better response and more loyalty from people, who have had a claims experience – it is actually the best advertisement, but it is expensive! ” (CFO General Insurance). As all its lines of business are within insurance, Zurich is not taking risks beyond its core competences and always has “ sufficient funds to honour all the past promises ” (Chief Actuary General Insurance) – an essential way to gain customer trust and investor confidence: “ Our resilience is part of the [customer] value proposition ” (CFO General Insurance). As one executive said “ We can’t get away from the fact that resilience comes from strong financial management and having, through that, a very robust and strong balance sheet that sits behind the business and you only get to a strong balance sheet if you’ve got the right financial processes, mechanisms and governance structures ” (CEO UK General Insurance). “ I would say we have a huge desire to be more customer-centric, I wouldn’t call us very customer-centric, not compared to very customer-centric organisations in the world, but maybe relative to our industry. At the end of the day … insurance is a very technical business … with underlying pricing usually driven by a line of business statistic, not a customer proposition ” (CFO General Insurance). Another aspect of the culture is the focus on communications between functions. In insurance “ There are really three key frontline functions in a general insurance business; the underwriting function, the claim function and the financial function and typically the senior underwriting, senior claims and senior finance

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Roads to Resilience: Building dynamic approaches to risk to achieve future success