Engaging our stakeholders
Recognising the strategic importance of being responsive to our stakeholders, we have developed and are implementing a systematic approach to identifying, prioritising and engaging with our key stakeholders.
As a large diversified company, our engagements with stakeholders have predominantly been decentralised. A process is currently underway to develop a more co-ordinated stakeholder management strategy and action plan. While all our stakeholders are important to us, we have completed a stakeholder mapping exercise that prioritises them based on an assessment of their dependence on our activities and their ability to influence what we do.
For each of these priority stakeholder groupings we have agreed whether the interaction with them should be co-ordinated at a Group or Cluster level, and we have assigned responsibility for managing that relationship to a senior Sanlam executive. Through this process we seek to ensure a systematic Group-wide approach to engaging with our stakeholders and to understanding and responding to their respective interests. The outcome of these engagements informs the Group strategy and our internal risk assessment processes.
The Group Intelligence Unit regularly undertakes surveys to assess the views of our key stakeholders. Through our membership of the Global Reputation Institute we are able to analyse stakeholders' perceptions regarding the nature of our products and services, and the quality of our internal policies and procedures. These studies are reviewed at the beginning of each year and, together with the Group strategy, inform our planning for the year ahead. Based on this analysis our top five external stakeholders are:
- Shareholders
- Policyholders
- Government and Regulators
- Analysts
- Business Partners
We engage with our stakeholders in South Africa through various structures as follows
- Group Finance engages with investors and analysts regarding the company's performance.
- The Corporate Affairs Department is responsible for managing the reputation of the organisation including coordination of stakeholder strategy within the group, including
- Our Public Affairs function, which ensures – through its membership of various corporate, government,and non-governmental bodies that Sanlam continues to contribute constructively to the policy discourse in the country;
- Our Communication function, which drives thought leadership activities, manages public engagement on key topical issues, and our consumer education programmes through which we improve financial literacy include road shows and media events.
- Market Development is responsible for the Sanlam Provincial Advisory Board (SPAB), which co-ordinates Sanlam business units within regions and facilitates cross selling and relationship building;
- The Group Compliance office engages with our Regulators;
- The Company Secretariat liaises with Regulators and Shareholders;
- Our various business unit representatives also engage with Government, Regulators, and Business Partners on policy issues impacting the business.
The Sustainability Management Framework that we developed this year includes specific key performance indicators aimed at ensuring that we have coordinated and effective engagement and feedback mechanisms. This includes provision for the Group and each cluster to annually review and identify existing and emerging stakeholder issues. The nature and outcomes of these engagements will feed into the annual performance appraisals of those responsible and inform our integrated and sustainability reporting processes.
- Yvonne Muthien, Chief Executive: Group Services