Corporate performance and stakeholder management

This is the topic of an article published by Kai-Uwe Schanz in the most recent edition of “Asia Insurance Review”, Asia’s leading insurance magazine. The author discusses aspects specific to the insurance industry but also provides general insights applicable to other industries.

The article offers some answers to the following two questions: “How can the management of a company’s relations with key stakeholders such as clients, investors and employees boost its financial performance?” And: “Which are the organizational and process prerequisites for reaping the benefits of stakeholder management?”

To prepare the ground Kai-Uwe Schanz highlights a number of factors which have recently added to the relevance of stakeholder management in the insurance industry, for example the deregulation of competition, an increased volatility of pricing and available cover and the closer alignment of capital requirements with underlying exposures.

The author argues that favorable interactions with relevant stakeholders have the potential of enhancing key corporate value drivers such as a company’s competitive position and the long-term fundamentals of its business environment. Based on the concept of the value chain Kai-Uwe Schanz specifically discusses the value-enhancing contribution of effective stakeholder management.

On the question of how to apply these insights to commercial practice and corporate reality the author offers two recommendations: First, to adopt an integrated approach to corporate messaging and, second, arguably more demanding, to more closely align the corporate strategy and communications functions.

The article is available under «Publications»