OUR STRATEGY
IAG's ambition is to be the world’s most respected group of general insurance companies.
Our strategy is to deliver superior performance by actively managing our portfolio of high-performing, customer-focused, diverse operations in a manner that delivers superior experiences for our customers and creates shareholder value.
We believe that, through managing our portfolio actively, we can deliver a consistent underlying performance despite having businesses that can be operating at different stages in both the economic and insurance cycles.
Building on the solid platform we have created since 2008, in June 2011, the Group reset its strategic priorities to:
- accelerate growth in Australia and New Zealand by stepping up initiatives to drive profitable organic growth, while remaining open to acquisitive opportunities that may arise;
- restore profitability in the UK; and
- boost our Asian footprint so this division delivers 10% of the Group’s gross written premiums by 2016.
Asia remains a priority region for us, and is vital to our medium to long term growth. We are now focused on accelerating our expansion plans beyond the countries in which we have an existing presence, into other target markets, and on delivering on the enormous potential attached to our Indian joint venture which is now up and running.
Our priorities are supported by two long-term financial targets:
- 1. Return on equity greater than 1.5x the weighted average cost of capital
The Group aims to achieve a return for ordinary shareholders that is a multiple of at least 1.5 times the Group's weighted average cost of capital on a normalised basis.
Return on equity is a simple measure of the earnings the Group is achieving (return) on the capital provided by its shareholders (equity). The return on the shareholders' funds portfolio are normalised when measuring performance against this goal. - 2. Top quartile total shareholder return
The Group aims to achieve top quartile total shareholder returns benchmarked against the S&P/ASX Top 50 Industrials.