Our response to stakeholder feedback

We are very grateful to all of the organisations that participated for taking the time to read our 2009 report and provide feedback. We have found it a very valuable exercise that has provided us with excellent material with which to develop our future strategy.

Some of the recommendations we have taken forward in this report include:

• We have improved the format of the report to define the strategic storyline better. This includes using consistent language throughout the report and establishing clear links between the strategy and the sections of detailed disclosure – throughout.
• We have improved the scope by identifying the time period, corporate and geographical scope as well as better defining our impact areas – see “About this Report” and “We are Allianz”.
• We have included an external stakeholder assessment, which provides an external view of our strategy (both positive comments and challenges) and recommendations for the future – see above.
• We are developing the metrics we use to measure CSR performance and, wherever possible, we have tried to use clear, comparable metrics for all impact areas – see ‘topic’ chapters.
• We have aligned the reporting of our greenhouse gas emissions to the GHG Protocol – see “Environmental Impact”.
• We have included a single “snapshot” summary view to include our past and present performance and our progress against our targets – see “Our Performance”.

However, in addition to the key recommendations above, there are other recommendations we have not been able to address in writing this report, but that we will continue to monitor with a view to reporting in the future. These are to:

• Undertake a formal materiality assessment of our environmental and social impacts – We intend to review our strategy in 2011. As part of this we intend to undertake a materiality assessment of our environmental and social impacts to prioritise areas of focus and our reporting.
• Measure our social impacts by using the Social Return on Investment (SROI) methodology – We have been unable to measure our social impacts using SROI due the length of time and resources it takes to carry out and availability of outcomes data.
• Implement an internal self-assessment of reporting against published guidelines such as GRI, UNGC or PoWAS (HRH the Prince of Wales‘ Accounting for Sustainability Guidelines) – In the spirit of continuous improvement this is an area we will consider in future, particularly once we have reviewed our strategy.
• Gain accreditation of our environmental management system (EMS) to ISO 14001 – We use the Allianz Group EMS, which conforms to the requirements of ISO 14001. We recognise that certification provides reassurance to stakeholders but we currently do not think it represents good value versus the resources that would be required to implement this.
• Seek external verification for our 2010 Report – Once again we understand the reassurance external verification gives to stakeholders, and this is an area we intend to consider in future. However currently we do not think verification will add value to our business and we prefer to continue to elicit independent feedback from our stakeholders which we will feed in to our future reports.