Insurers’ Corporate Responsibility Policies: a Response to the Industry’s Bad Image?

Henri-Claude Bettignies, François Lépineux and Cheon Kheong Tan

Chapter 7 in Finance for a Better World, 2009, pp 118-139 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract The German sociologist Beck argues that a new frame of reference is needed to understand the world in which we have entered: that of a risk society on the global setting (Beck 1992, 1999). The alarming trend of environmental degradation, as well as the multiple advances of technological progress, bring about unprecedented risks and challenges; we thus need to learn how to address these new problems posed to our socioeconomic system and to our culture, for instance by climate change and the mounting threats on ecosystems, or by the development of genetics or nanotechnologies. The advent of this “world risk society” with all its consequences provides new opportunities for insurance companies, which can find in this evolution new fields to apply their expertise, and strong motivations to develop innovative policies and practices that will contribute to restore the industry’s tarnished reputation. This chapter will strive to answer three questions: why is the image of this industry so bad today? What are the corporate responsibility (CR) policies adopted by a group of pioneering companies? And is there a clear relationship between these two facts?

Keywords: Socially Responsible Investment; Corporate Responsibility; Insurance Industry; Sustainability Report; Global Compact (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-23575-5_7

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DOI: 10.1057/9780230235755_7

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