Winners 2018

Best annual report – FTSE 100 organisation

Winner
Delivering inclusive capitalism
Sharing success with investors, customers and societies
Annual report and accounts 2017
Legal & General Group
Agency: Superunion

Insurance companies are complex businesses, and nowhere is this more obvious than in their annual reports. The judges were really impressed by Legal & General’s offering which, they felt, ‘brought a difficult-to-illustrate business to life while articulating a clear story about the role of the company plays in society’.

This role is key to everything Legal & General does, with a core purpose to improve the lives of customers, build a better society for the long-term and create value for its shareholders. It shapes every aspect of how the insurance company does business.

The annual report is a key document to share this strategy, and sits at the heart of Legal & General’s integrated approach to communications. There has also been an increasing focus on how companies consider and respond to the needs of a wider stakeholder group, which meant that it was important to keep this content within the body of the report and not sidelined into a separate corporate responsibility report.

This becomes immediately obvious from page two, within the section Culture which focuses on Legal & General’s behaviours and business principles – customer-led, economically and socially useful, fair and transparent, inclusive – offering short examples of how each work in practice.

The Acting responsibly section, which is within the body of the strategic report, reports on its tax contribution, the gender pay gap, the steps Legal & General is taking to address gender balance and also improve diversity, its internal campaign to encourage conversations about mental health in the workplace, its focus on corporate governance and the conversations it holds around tackling climate change.

In line with its ‘fair and transparent’ principle, the report is clear and accessible. Case studies and imagery demonstrate how Legal & General aims to help customers build financial resilience throughout their lives. Graphics are used to explain complex information. And, as managing risk is key to everything the business does, its reporting on this area is not limited to the risk section but is written in layman’s terms in the strategic report.

‘This was a very visually appealing report; it was clear, well laid out and made excellent use of colour and photographs, complemented by a coherent and aligned online report,’ said the judges.