At the heart of ABI’s goals for 2009 – 2011 is Consumer Strategy. Company has worked out necessary priorities to enhance customers’ experiences by improving service and to bolster its own reputation and markets.
The designed priorities are directed to relationships with public authorities and the media, fully understanding members’ concerns and the quality and industry knowledge of company’s staff.
The ABI’s priorities for 2009 – 2011:
-Improving outcomes for consumers,
-Developing markets,
-Securing better regulation to build market confidence,
-Reducing risk and unnecessary costs,
-Enhancing the operation of capital markets.
Improving outcomes for consumers will enhance the reputation of the industry with consumers and stakeholders. ABI members want to increase confidence and trust in the industry and stimulate demand for products. To do this, the industry needs to improve outcomes for customers by dealing with areas ofdetriment that can be addressed through collective action.
Industrywide Consumer Strategy consists of a four-stage process:
-proactively identifying areas of detriment,
-developing and implementing plans to improve outcomes for customers,
-gathering evidence to demonstrate improvements,
-using that evidence to secure justified reputational gains and seeking regulatory reform, to the benefit of consumers and members.
Developing markets. This point is directed to enable ABI member firms to meet consumer needs more effectively and in new ways and so develop new and existing markets. Through collective action, ABI members can persuade authorities to tackle regulatory and legal obstacles to the industry in its development of new products and services that will then better secure consumer confidence and larger markets. In doing so, the ABI needs to work across savings and protection objectives to ensure that key workstreams are aligned.
The point mentioned above has strategic focus on building the case in current economic circumstances for the need to ‘save and protect’ and on ensuring the regulatory regime is developed to enable effective distribution.
Regulation and market confidence is directed to promote market confidence in the financial services sector through better regulation combined with encouragement of competition and market-based applications to problems.
This priority will ensure the regulatory regime secures a proper balance for consumers between being well-protected and being able to enjoy competitive and innovative markets. Strategic focus designed in this area is to secure confidence in the solvency of insurers in current market conditions through work with the FSA, EC and international regulators as well as to ensure that the solvency regime, in the UK and internationally, protects consumers from risk at appropriate product cost and enables the efficient use of capital to be achieved internationally.
Enhancing the operation of capital markets is aimed to enhance the status of the insurance industry with its customers, the authorities and company’s stakeholders through the work on corporate governance. The aim is to protect the value of insurers’ investments in the short term and build foundations for longer-term growth.
The strategic focus of the point is to underpin much of the work company will reassess the effectiveness of governance and the contribution it can make to investment value creation in the changed environment.
L.D.