Aegon: Managing responsibility

Featuring the management system says that corporate responsibility is embedded in the company.

The Site

Netherlands-based Aegon is a world player in the life insurance and pensions industry with semi-autonomous local operations in Europe, the US and Asia. The Corporate Responsibility (CR) section of its website explains how the group’s CR objectives and values are developed and managed within its decentralised organisational model.

An Organization sub-section deals separately with the handling of corporate responsibility at group, country and inter-country levels. Other sub-sections cover Policies, Practice (community/charity support) and the annual CR report. Sub-section menus and in-text links are used to expand on overview pages (for example, to give access to the Code of Conduct or executive biographies), while descriptions are characterised throughout by their use of clear language and simple sentences.

The Takeaway

Corporate responsibility content is gaining prominence on company websites as organisations respond to the increasing concern of customers with their business ethics as well as their products and services. Few, however, go so far as Aegon in trying to show how they have organised the business to deliver on the headline messages and feelgood aspirations. Its use of straightforward, clearly expressed explanations and links reinforces a sense of openness and honesty, and also that the company itself has a thought-through grasp of what it needs to do.

By featuring its management system, Aegon impresses on customers that CR has been embedded in the company from top to bottom and as part of the way it does business.

First published on 16 August, 2005