January 2, 2011

“Nir Kossovsky, founder of Steel City Re, has argued for such a strategic and holistic approach to intangibles. In his framework a company’s intangibles include its processes for producing safe, high-quality, innovative, ethical and sustainable products and services. A company’s reputation is the sum total of stakeholders’ perceptions of how the company manages those intangibles.
Starting from the premise that what cannot be measured cannot be managed, Steel City Re has developed a quantitative measure of reputation. That measure – the Steel City Re Reputation/Intangible Asset Index – uses forward-looking equity market-based measures of various stakeholders’ assessments of the company. Specifically, the index incorporates proxies for customers’ views, suppliers’ views and investors’ views. In addition, a measure of the company’s effectiveness at communicating its actions and intentions is included. Taken together, these parameters produce a percentile ranking of companies’ reputations – that is, the aggregate view of stakeholders as to how effective each company is at managing its intangibles.”

Deutsche Bank
January 2, 2011

“These parameters produce a percentile ranking of companies’ reputations – that is, the aggregate view of stakeholders as to how effective each company is at managing its intangibles.”

Reputation value: economic benefits of stakeholders’ expectations.

Reputations are valuable strategic intangible assets. Threats to these assets⏤ enterprise reputation risks, often mislabeled “brand risks” ⏤ need to be managed, and management needs to be overseen through reputation risk governance lest reputational damage or reputational harm result in long-tailed go-forward losses in economic value and/or political power. Because these intangible risks arise from the interplay of stakeholder expectation, experiences, and media amplification, parametric insurances for intangible asset risks, for reputational value, for reputational harm, and for reputation assurance help mitigate risk by telling a simple, convincing and completely credible story of quality reputation governance to stakeholders. This story telling effect is the expressive power of insurance complementing insurance’s better known instrumental power of indemnification.

Reputation value is a strategic power companies use to sell more, faster, and at premium prices; and to obtain labor, vendor services, as well as capital on preferred terms.

Steel City Re mitigates the hazards of ESG (reputation) risk that threaten reputation value. We use parametric reputation insurances, ESG insurances, and risk management advisory services to make our clients reputationally resilient.

Risk management, risk financing in insurance captives, and risk transfer through reputation insurances comprise the constituent elements of a comprehensive Steel City Re reputation risk governance and management solution.

Click on the highlighted text for a broader view of reputation risk case studies and reputation premium; or to explore additional articles by Steel City Re here, mentions of Steel City Re here, and comments on newsworthy topics by Steel City Re here.

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Context and Background

Risk managers are now central to the process for managing risks to reputation and that’s a process marketers and communications professionals need to be a part of. The oversight of reputation risk management is mission-critical.

Courts have increasingly been ruling that reputation is a mission critical function and oversight of its management is a responsibility of the board of directors. Courts are also ruling that marketing statements companies make – if they related to issues that affect their reputation, like ESG – may be considered material by investors. Litigation along these lines has yielded large settlements or verdicts for plaintiffs.

And now, the SEC has proposed new rules requiring disclosures by public companies related to their ESG activities; those statements could become a communications and reputational minefield.

As a result, reputation risk management is evolving into an intelligence gathering operation spanning the entire enterprise, roping in the enterprise risk manager, compliance counsel, and increasingly, reporting up to the Chief Legal Officer. There is a growing recognition that reputation is not a product merely of marketing and media coverage, but of the degree to which stakeholders’ expectations are aligned with actual performance. The reputation risk management process requires a thorough and ongoing analysis of stakeholder expectations, the risks of disappointment, and a plan for either managing those expectations or assessing and insuring against the cost of failure.    

One Last Question

Are ESG insurance or reputation insurance part of your strategy?