The U.S. Department of Labor has now launched an investigation and said it will hold not only companies that employ child labor accountable, but the larger, better known companies that have child labor in their supply chains. The new regulatory stakeholders in companies’ supply chains bring with them investors and litigators, who had material financial consequences to activities already being followed by activists.
ESG rhetoric pledge regrets. With ESG becoming as important to some companies as EBITDA and marketing departments ramping up the ESG rhetoric, the effective scope of dutiful oversight has expanded…The Delaware court increasingly sees oversight of all things mission-critical as a board duty.
The settlement with Activision Blizzard could have widespread implications for how companies choose to manage risk, according to Nir Kossovsky, CEO of Steel City Re, which provides insurance for reputation and assists companies in establishing risk management functions. Kossovsky said that companies should create “reputation risk leadership committees” composed of representatives from “every silo” of the company that interacts with a critical stakeholder group…“No one can argue with thoughtful risk management and dutiful oversight, but you need a demonstrable, effective process to make that claim.”
Mission critical risk denial can be costly. A holiday flight cancellation fiasco by Southwest Airlines crushed the company’s market capitalization and caused the company to take an $800 million dollar write-down for Q4 and record losses three times greater than analysts had expected. Equity returns 42 days into the crisis show Southwest trailing the Dow Jones U.S. Airlines Index by 18.4%. Had it merely kept pace with that index, Southwest’s market cap would have been more than $3.3 billion higher.
Culture limits risk strategy. Southwest was overwhelmed and unable to adapt as a severe storm swept the US. But behind those specific issues is an insular management team that critics say lacks the imagination and technology expertise to help avoid such crises. […] The carrier has a long-standing reputation of being slow to adopt new technology, and spent years implementing a new reservation system and updating its maintenance operations.
The velocity of reputational risk is approaching the speed of a nuclear assault on a nation, said Nir Kossovsky, Steel City Re CEO. A “Military grade” response to sped up reputational crises requires cold war game theory strategy and preemption.
ESG-related false advertising litigation. Since the onset of 2021, there have been multiple class actions filed in federal courts over greenwashing claims targeting companies from the retail industry, such as H&M and Allbirds, and food manufacturers, like Vital Farms. The statements attacked by consumers in these lawsuits varied due to the wide-ranging nature of the marketing techniques used by the companies, including the use of internal sustainability metrics as well as the reliance on benchmarks created by third parties.
Mitigating an expectation shift: An effective, thoughtful risk strategy. Of the many on offer, only our solution is quantitative, battle-tested, quality management-proven, and grounded in four Nobel Prize winning insights. The bottom line: mitigating costly reputation risk by targeting factors that would lead to a shift in expectations
Shifting expectations: bank run. Douglas Diamond and Philip Dybvig won the Nobel Memorial Prize in economics this year for their work on (bank runs). “A bank run in our model,” they write, “is caused by a shift in expectations, which could depend on almost anything, consistent with the apparently irrational observed behavior of people running on banks.” “Almost anything” could include social media rumors, why not. […] “Every banker knows that if he has to prove that he is worthy of credit, however good may be his arguments, in fact his credit is gone.”
Well underwritten parametric reputation insurance. Parametric triggers for insurance can be anything quantifiable. In the case of my firm, Steel City Re, we use parametric measures of reputational value in our Tokio Marine Kiln policies. Parametric policies provide for ease of underwriting, facilitate claims adjustment, and enable coverage to insure complex risks including reputation and environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) factors-linked reputation loss.