Our principles from a customer’s point of view:

More than one in five homes and one in three small businesses in Australia are underinsured or have no insurance. Why are so many people prepared to risk the biggest assets they will probably ever have? When you think about it from a customer’s point of view, it’s understandable that many people have a natural aversion to insurance. After all, this is an industry built on the premise that bad things might happen and who wants to think about that? It’s also a complex industry and most people don’t really understand how it works. Literally, they “just don’t get it”. At the same time, more and more of our customers are telling us that they would like a better understanding of how insurance works. That’s why, in last year’s annual report, we began the process of demystifying our business. In ‘part one’ of what we promised would be an ongoing risk management story we outlined the four principles on which Insurance Australia Group (IAG) is built to create value for all our stakeholders – one of the most important being our customers. In this report – ‘part two’ of the story – we explore the mechanics of running Australasia’s leading general insurance group from a customer’s perspective. We aim to demonstrate how by sticking to our four principles – paying claims, understanding and pricing risk, managing costs and reducing risk – we will deliver long term value for customers and shareholders alike.