"The world around us has seen lots of shocks of different kinds and will continue to do so. Financial services has been at the heart of some of those.

When we look at insurance, while we haven’t had the same ups and downs as say the banking industry, the insurance industry is quite complicated and hard to understand. But in the end, trust and transparency are the only ways to combat these issues.

First and foremost customers rely on us to be there when something goes wrong – they need to trust that we will be.

Secondly, all the people that we deal with need to trust in the way we do business in a complex industry. Our shareholders, who have experienced disappointments in recent years from RSA, need to have their confidence rebuilt.

It’s our job not just to improve the reality but to show people honestly what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, how we’re doing it. No secrets. Difficult decisions talked about. Problems recognised. Outcomes, I hope, good ones. That’s the intention.

And I believe it’s a really important lesson, not just for RSA, not just for the insurance industry, but of modern business. Trust and transparency are important. But of course, to build trust you need to perform and you need to perform across the different lenses – shareholders, regulators, customers, society as a whole."

—Stephen Hester, Group CEO, 25 February 2015

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