- Corporations around the world find themselves under increasing public scrutiny regarding their environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance. Firms are expected to measure a large number of non-financial performance indicators, ranging from the amount of pollutants they emit over the quality of corporate governance to employee wellbeing.
Non-financial KPIs highly relevant
Whereas the benefits of ESG analysis for investors is widely publicized and institutional asset managers make heavy use of a number of sustainable investing approaches, there is no research on the relationship between companies’ sustainability and ESG parameters and the risk they pose to their insurers, particularly in the Director’s and Officer’s (D&O) Insurance segment.
In order to fill this gap, Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty SE (AGCS) has partnered with The Value Group to further investigate the relationship between companies’ ESG performance and the probability, frequency and scope of harmful events. The new modelling approach focusses on both ESG-related metrics such as corporate governance as well as other Quality parameters including compliance standards.
The results show that ESG and Quality Parameters are far more than just tools to achieve social and environmental progress. Across the board, ESG parameters have a highly significant predictive power for all types of harmful and loss events. Our data show that there is a strong correlation between sustainability data and the probability of events that cause financial or reputational harm to a company as well as damage to society as a whole. Such events could ultimately trigger D&O claims.
As a next step of their cooperation, AGCS and Value Group plan to co-create and develop a predictive model for AGCS’s Financial Lines Underwriters globally that will boost their analytic capabilities when assessing the performance of companies.
Shanil Williams, Global Head of Financial Lines explains: “I am incredibly excited about our partnership with the Value Group. D&O underwriting has traditionally been focused on financial risks due to the driver of claims being bankruptcy and financial statement issues. The world has changed, D&O claims are coming from all angles and we need to be nimble to adjust our underwriting approach to be more data driven and predictive model based. Modelling thousands of data points correlated to claims data presents powerful information for our underwriters we plan to evolve this into a service offering to clients where we can start our risk dialogues based on new and innovative risk scoring. This is the future – clients and insurers having a partnership approach to mitigating and predicting risk based on data.”
Claus Duerndorfer, MD and founder The Value Group says: “Over the course of a three-year joint project between The Value Group and AGCS, it was confirmed that systematic integration of financial-, non-financial- and ESG-data creates deeper understanding of risk factors. The project derived a set of KPI’s that have a significant power to predict future risk events. Building on their history of fruitful cooperation, AGCS and The Value Group will continue to develop analytical tools to support the underwriting process at AGCS.”
Dedicated ESG expertise
Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) services at AGCS
AGCS supports its clients to identify and assess material risks and develops recommendations on how to mitigate ESG risks. In a fast changing world, AGCS identifies emerging issues and develops risk management strategies.
Our consulting team is available at: AgcsSustainability@allianz.com
We are dedicated to deliver the best possible solutions to the management, control and reduction of ESG risks.
Further information & reading
About Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty
Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty (AGCS) is a leading global corporate insurance carrier and a key business unit of Allianz Group. We provide risk consultancy, Property-Casualty insurance solutions and alternative risk transfer for a wide spectrum of commercial, corporate and specialty risks across 10 dedicated lines of business.
Our customers are as diverse as business can be, ranging from Fortune Global 500 companies to small businesses, and private individuals. Among them are not only the world’s largest consumer brands, tech companies and the global aviation and shipping industry, but also wineries, satellite operators or Hollywood film productions. They all look to AGCS for smart answers to their largest and most complex risks in a dynamic, multinational business environment and trust us to deliver an outstanding claims experience.
Worldwide, AGCS operates with its own teams in 33 countries and through the Allianz Group network and partners in over 200 countries and territories, employing over 4,300 people. As one of the largest Property-Casualty units of Allianz Group, we are backed by strong and stable financial ratings. In 2019, AGCS generated a total of €9.1 billion gross premium globally.