THE National Reinsurance Corp. of the Philippines (Nat Re) announced it was recently recognized by the Institute of Corporate Directors (ICD) with two awards for its good corporate governance practices, which the ICD said are based on the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean) “corporate governance scorecard,” or ACGS.
Nat Re was named one of the country’s top 15 insurers regulated by the Insurance Commission (IC) out of a total of 119 IC-regulated companies.
In a statement, Nat Re President and CEO Allan R. Santos expressed being honored “to be recognized for our adherence to the region’s highest corporate governance standards.”
Santos added the firm strives “to achieve our business goals while staying compliant with the law, meeting the highest ethical standards and being guided by our company principles.”
Nat Re, the country’s national reinsurer, and the other insurance firms were assessed by the ICD based on their performance on the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) principles. The OECD principles are: rights of shareholders; equitable treatment of shareholders; role of stakeholders; disclosure and transparency; and, board responsibility.
According to NatRe, the ACGS is a “globally-benchmarked scoring system used for assessing the corporate governance performance of Asean-listed companies.”
“Its goal is to improve the corporate governance standards and practices of publicly-listed” firms and insurance companies, it added.
The IC, with its initiative to raise the bar of corporate governance practices in the insurance industry, mandated the adoption of the ACGS by all insurance companies and mutual benefit associations.
For publicly-listed companies such as Nat Re, the ACGS serves as a useful diagnostic tool to guide improvement of corporate governance standards, the insurer said. For Nat Re’s foreign investors, the scorecard’s methodology, adopted by companies across six Asean-member nations, provides comparable information to form part of their investment decision-making process, Nat Re explained.
Nat Re said its corporate governance practices have also been recognized in the region.