Wrote The Consumerist, “Someone at AIG must have a sense of humor. The bailed-out insurance behemoth — and, more importantly, one-time Worst Company In America champ — has announced it will now offer insurance policies that help defray the costs for damage control after a company does something that puts in the ranks of widely reviled businesses like AIG.” At the Ritholtz blog, the story made the daily “WTF Video.” The New York Times’ Dealbook was more charitable: “A.I.G. knows a little bit about crisis communications, of course. After its initial $65 billion bailout by the government, the insurer became a target of widespread scorn, its very name a shorthand for the excesses that led to the financial crisis.”
Fast forward four months, factor in empirical data, and you might come to the reasonable conclusion that AIG really does know a thing or two about reputation restoration. The Steel City Re reputation risk metrics show a company whose reputation – a leading indicators of economic activity -- is well ahead of its equity performance. If Huygens gave financial advice, this would be a buy.
As of 9 Feb and from a pool of 7448 companies of which 174 comprise members of the Insurance industry, AIG ranked just below the median at the 44.5th percentile relative to its peers. Given that one year ago, its rank was nearly at the bottom at 1.2%, it is not surprising that over the past year, as well as past three months, its reputation metrics have been far more volatile than the industry as a whole. However, its return on equity is only in the 12th percentile relative to its peers. As they say, “It’s reputation all the way up.”
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