Moral opportunism

It does say a lot that even for a company like Muich Re, which is so huge and dominant in the insurance world, the very nature of its reinsurance merited a quick primer from the BBC when mentioning it, noting that it is insurance for insurance companies. The average person will not care to retain that. The average person will chalk it all off to financial services or worse, just a generic notion of “insurance companies” – as if they are all the same – and let the news entrench itself in their default story about how the entire insurance world is governed by some form of depravity or bastardy.

The party mentioned in this BBC story happened a few years ago, and to even peg it to Munich Re seems a bit unfair, as the news indicates it was part of an agency that was part of a subsidiary that has since been folded into the parent. And the folks who organized the party are all gone. And yet, reputationally, there stands Munich Re, somehow looking like it still has lipstick on its collar.

It is not fair. It is not accurate. And it is also the way that it is. Lest any of us give in to the Pavlovian urge to simply shrug and assume the industry’s reputation will never be much good anyway, remember this: every time a law comes up to regulate your business, every time your company is in front of a jury, every time a carrier’s name is mentioned in the media…these are the things that form the background to reputation. The things that gain approval or denial to things like fair tort verdicts, legislative support and even customer acceptance.

Personally, I think Munich Re should have come out with this a long time ago, if they had the chance to do so. (For all we know, Munich Re itself leaked the story just to get it out of the way.) I have been in this business long enough to know that there will always be a certain level of moral opportunism, shall we call it, to it. We see it especially in the halls of government, but in business too. And while it might not be realistic to expect all business to conduct itself as if it were raised in a monastery, it would help if and when professionals act in a manner unbefitting of their station, that the industry can at least deal with the situation quickly and crisply, or at least deal with it with the knowledge that maybe the public will give them the benefit of the doubt. It’s a crazy dream, I know, but a good one.