Corporate Governance And Corporate Social Responsibility – QBE Insurance Group

Services offered by QBE Insurance Group

Discuss about the Corporate Governance and Corporate Social Responsibility.

The combination of Queensland Insurance, Bankers and Traders insurance company and Equitable Life and general insurance co., formed the largest insurance group in Australia, founded by one chairman Mr. J.D.O Burns where it was christened QBE insurance group and the headquarters based in Sydney, Australia, Chiefly Square, (QBE 2015 annual report). This group was founded 131 years ago and deals in the business of general insurance and reinsurance services. It has been recognized globally as the best insurance firm and selling its insurance services to the Pacific region, Europe, Equator Reinsurance limited segments, Asia, New Zealand, Australia, and America (Allen, et al., 2013). The kind of insurance services offered by this insurance group include some of the following; Public/product liability insurance policies, Motor and motor causalities insurance policies, Insurance policies on Commercial and domestic products, Accident and health insurance products, Marine energy and aviation insurance products and many others.

The organizational structure of QBE according to 2014 annual report (2015) is that it is headed by the Chief Executive Officer, who also is the groups’ acting Chief Financial Officer in the New Zealand and Australia operation regions, Mr. Patrick Regan. The next in command is the Executive General Manager who holds the docket of Corporate Partners and Direct, who ensures efficiency of services provision in the Motor trades, traveling, CTP, Financial institutions businesses and many other related services as a broker, an agent in personal insurance lines.

 The Executive General Manager, currently Mr. Jason Clarke, holds the Intermediary Distribution docket, which deals with such other branches in the organization as; workers compensation, underwriting agencies, Australian intermediaries, aviation &marine and international brokers and many other general insurance services. The other chief executive officers in the organizational structure includes; Mr. Inder Singh, who currently is the chief financial officer, and oversees all related financial services; then Mr. Steven Raynor, who is the Executive General Manager in transformation, who works particularly in bringing together different specialist for the alignment and strategy driving, and the promotion of innovation. Mss. Betina Pidcock heads the Marketing docket as the executive general manager, Mr. Declan Moore as the Chief underwriting officer, Mss. Sally Kincaid as the Chief Human resource officer, Madam Anna Gould as the chief risk officer, Mr. Tony Forward as the chief information officer and many other leaders in the executive branch of the business (Bath & Libbesson, 2010). All these leaders efforts combined have been the reason for the success of QBE as an insurance group business.

Organizational structure of QBE Insurance Group

According to their half year report running up to June 2008, QBE say that they strategically focus in potential delivery of insurance services to all its customers and shareholders worldwide, and maintain their relevance in the insurance markets despite the fluctuations in price in both local currencies and the overseas currencies and the influx rate at which risks have occurred and catastrophe claims made (Colquit, et al., 2012). According to their 2015 annual report (2016), the QBE had significant achievements and enjoyed tremendous profits in the year 2015 despite the various challenges encountered in the insurance business, thereby underwriting the profits of the firm through their strategic rationalization and refocusing on their strategies of activities.

The company’s’ journey towards excellence was also increased by the action they took of implementing a model that is integrated with objectives that have a global vision in operation and using the Group Shared Services Center (GSSC) appropriately in the quest to communicate effectively for strategic achievement of its global businesses and processes, such as; provision of captive insurance to its clients and a range of financial, infrastructural and people services (Harris, et al., 2013). The annual report confirms that the insurance company faces a lot of external challenges and risks that confront its business procedures some of them including;

The constant fluctuation in currencies especially in the overseas markets which sometimes forces them to change their interest rates which also ends up in very little returns in sales. For them to remain afloat on the competitive edge, the QBE executive wing and sales managers resolved to balance their short-term returns on their investments due to the market challenges experienced. The increased level of catastrophe insurance claims, especially from New Zealand and Australia due to the insurance level of NSW CTP that had significantly increased during the year of 2015.

The internal factors that the insurance group experienced were that of recovering their materials from their employees and stakeholders under the umbrella of Individual risk and catastrophe protection in the Groups’ reinsurance category (Jones, 2010). According to the QBE groups’ financial chief officer, Mr. Patrick Regan, the major activities that the insurance group focuses on yearly that enables them to remain the world’s best global insurer includes;

Prompt and timely delivery of earnings and the reservation of their stability and predictability to their clients, members, and stakeholders. For their business to underline profits and be successful in the market, they concentrate in the achievement of an all-around organic growth modestly (Stork & De Vries, 2009).QBE attains its competitive advantage by also growing strongly the dividends acquired to their shareholders.

Achievements of QBE Insurance Group

Another activity is that the group always focuses on the maintenance of stable capital positioning and also slightly stronger dividend remittances in the divisional section that is a little bit higher than the previous returns (Kemp, 2011). The insurance group focuses on the reduction of its operating costs and with the aim of acquiring a lower expense ratio of about 1%. (Smith & Davies, 2009), confirm that the domestic and contextual factors that affect the business in its quest towards achieving excellence include some of the following;

Constantly emerging environmental risks that increase the catastrophe claims from their markets which reduces the sales they make in a particular period, but the group has learnt on this risks and as a result came up with an operation criteria that assists them to identify, and make an analysis of the impact that will be created by the risk and be able to come up with the strategies of curbing the risk.

The reaction of their employees and staffs to any risks that may be encountered may be negative, and some actions that may be taken could be dangerous to the maintenance of the business’ reputation in the market which sometimes may lead to the drop in sales (Liability, 2011). Fortunately, the business was able to identify this and came up with an initiative framework in which employees are given training platforms that are related to risks that occur globally, and also having a platform in which employee performance is monitored, and the correct analysis of data can be observed.

Insurance regulatory regimes all over the world have been changing and updating their rules and regulations on matters of insurance and these forces the QBE group to find ways in adjusting on how to manage these changes and be able to remain compliant through with the evolving requirements of the act of combining globally consistent frameworks with the local expertise available.

 According to (Norfolk, 2012), another challenge encountered is that changing consumer taste and preferences, market prices and the pricing policies and the ever changing technology in terms of cybercrimes have been part of the stumbling blocks towards maintaining excellence due to the need of the company to be able to adjust according to market demands and regulation compliance.

According to (Outreville, 2012), QBE as an organization also has its ethical codes of conducts which provide a guideline to all its employees on how to do their duties professionally in some issues related to customers and the success of the business. If these codes are breached, then it sometimes forces the authorities to take action on the employee which may also tarnish the name of the organization. Some of the breaches that may be done by employees according to the ethical codes document include; unethical, illegal, fraudulent, corrupt and dishonest conduct; behaving or conducting oneself in a manner that it poses a threat to QBE’s reputation; in case one undergoes a personal change and personal circumstances, then fails to notify QBE in time, which may result in affecting their ability to perform their roles; the breach of applicable regulations, policies and laws booth of the insurance group and the environmental or legal ones; getting involved in the financial crime such as bribery, corruption, fraud or money laundering.

Challenges faced by QBE Insurance Group

 The organizational and business practices required by QBE according to (Ramsay, 2012), apart from providing insurance services, include activities like; expansion of its businesses through acquisition of more shareholders and companies like Mexican Insurer Seguros Cumbre SA de CV in the year 2007 and the one in America called, General causality insurance, The one in California called Balboa Insurance and many others. The other kind of business activity is that of sponsoring sports as a way of marketing its services through the involvement in sporting activities using it as a forum for conducting their advertisement and sales.

Conclusion

All the environmental and marketing challenges discussed, the structural format, the organizational businesses, and practices together with its diverse functions all relate in the manner that they form a basis for which the organization can always forge forward and perform well in its business line. Therefore, the number of issues examined in this document in terms of the insurance group’s business and management contexts, the external factors and marketing challenges faced by the organization and how they find or try to find solutions to the problems and the general underlying returns they get, gives us a clearer picture of how organizations can be successful in its operations but only through proper laying of structures and strategies, use of correct kind of employees and staff who are specialized in a particular area and also appropriate decision making towards the journey to excellence.

References

Allen, D.E., Singh, A.K. and Powell, R., 2013. Analyzing the return distributions of Australian stocks: the CAPM, factor models and quantile regressions. Global Business and Economics Review, 15(1), pp.88-109.

Bath, M. and Libbesson, K.A., 2010. Insurance Law: Third Parties and S 54-Another Nail in the Coffin of’Claims Made and Notified’Policies?. Keeping Good Companies, 62(8), p.488.

Colquit, L., Crutchley, C. and Swidler, S., 2012. Sustainable Insurance Firms in Unsustainable Economic Times: Do Sustainable Corporate Policies Matter in Times of Financial Crisis?. International Review of Accounting, Banking & Finance, 4(1).

Harris, J., Hargovan, A. and Adams, M.A., 2013. Australian corporate law (Vol. 2). LexisNexis Butterworths.

Jones, P.M., 2010. Trade credit insurance. Primer Series on Insurance, 15.

Kemp, S., 2011. Corporate governance and corporate social responsibility: lessons from the land of OZ. Journal of Management & Governance, 15(4), pp.539-556.

Liability, A., 2011. General Liability. Excess/Umbrella Liability, Professional Liability/Errors &.

Norfolk, N., 2012. Liability Insurance Schedule. policy.

Outreville, J.F., 2012. The world’s largest reinsurance groups: A look at names, numbers and countries from 1980 to 2010. Insurance and Risk Management, 80(1), pp.137-156.

Ramsay, D., 2012. Lessons for directors after James Hardie. Law Society Journal: the official journal of the Law Society of New South Wales, 50(6), p.60.

Smith, J. and Davies, C., 2009. Transforming HR in partnership with the business at QBE Insurance. Strategic HR Review, 8(5), pp.11-17.

Stork, P.A. and de Vries, C.G., 2009. The stability of the Australian Banking sector. In The Banking Crisis Handbook (pp. 397-416). CRC Press.