We maintain an open dialogue with our stakeholders and have made the further systematic expansion of dialogue channels a goal of our Sustainability Strategy 2015 – 2017. By sharing information and opinions with our stakeholders we are able to integrate, as far as possible, the expectations and aspirations of the various groups into our business operations. Furthermore, this dialogue helps to identify risks and opportunities at an early stage and serves to build trust.
Our stakeholder universe was defined as part of the elaboration of the Sustainability Strategy. The selection of relevant stakeholders is based on our business operations and our geographical presence, and is regularly reconciled with representatives of the business units. The following stakeholder groups are particularly relevant to us: our clients, our employees, the capital market, the public sector and non-governmental organisations (NGOs).
We maintain an ongoing dialogue with our stakeholders in a variety of ways. Through conferences, roadshows and one-to-one meetings, for example, we stay in contact with representatives of the capital market. Analysts and institutional investors make the most of our annual Investors' Day, among other things, to engage in an intensive exchange with our management. Our employees cultivate the dialogue with our worldwide customers through direct, face-to-face discussions. Furthermore, we regularly measure customer satisfaction with the involvement of external market research institutes. We similarly engage in an ongoing dialogue with political decision-makers, supervisory authorities and insurance industry associations – mostly in relation to topical issues in insurance supervision and financial market regulation in Germany, the European Union and on the wider international level. These include, among other things, the preparations for the Solvency II review process, the development of a global, risk-based group-wide capital standard for insurers and negotiations between the European Union and the United States for a bilateral agreement on prudential insurance and reinsurance measures. In this context we contribute our specialist expertise from business practice to the public debate.