Stakeholders

Listening is the first step to leading. That’s why we make improved engagement with all our stakeholders a top priority. And in 2011, we made important progress toward meeting this goal.

Who and How We Serve

Our stakeholders include employees, agency owners, investors, customers, consumers, policymakers and opinion leaders. Understanding and responding to their expectations is essential to our success.

Why We Care

Our business is helping people protect what they have, and prepare for the future. So listening to customers and communities helps us manage the risks they face. It also helps us better understand their needs and how they are changing, so we can deliver innovative products and services in the best possible ways.

Listening to employees helps us tap their unique talents and meet their different development aspirations. Understanding both their needs and their skills helps improve Allstate’s overall performance and enables us to meet our customers’ evolving needs.

Listening to our agents helps us equip them with the resources to consistently serve and satisfy our customers. Because Allstate agents work in our communities every day, they also help us better understand where our social investments can have the greatest impact.

Listening to investors, consumers, policymakers and opinion leaders helps broaden our perspective, sharpen our skills and innovate in every phase of our operations.

What We Do

We interact with our stakeholders in many formal and informal ways, including forums, one-on-one meetings, regular phone calls and via email. We also have several specific programs that engage various stakeholder groups:

Stakeholder Engagement Panel

In 2011, we worked with the nonprofit Ceres to convene a panel with NGO representatives, investors and opinion leaders as well as top-level Allstate employees. The group gathered feedback on our performance and our plans, as well as information about our priority sustainability issues. Following this panel, we undertook a rigorous sustainability materiality analysis to identify existing and emerging sustainability risks and opportunities for the company. This panel will now meet twice a year to guide our strategy and evaluate progress with Allstate’s leadership team.

Reputation Scorecard

For the second year, we used the Allstate Reputation Scorecard to measure overall reputation across all stakeholder groups, determine key drivers of reputation within each group, and identify the key expectations of our stakeholders.

The Reputation Scorecard measures stakeholder expectations and Allstate’s performance against 32 key attributes across seven broad dimensions of reputation: Products and Services, Innovation, Governance, Workplace, Citizenship, Leadership and Financial Performance. The survey uses both quantitative and qualitative methods to determine what is most important to specific stakeholder audiences, as well as key expectations across all stakeholders.

From this Scorecard, we have identified that collectively our stakeholder groups expect Allstate to:

• Act ethically, fairly and responsibly
• Provide customers with a dependable, hassle-free relationship
• Provide clear and credible leadership and ensure financial stability
• Provide value at a competitive price
• Use its influence and local presence to support important causes

There is accountability at the highest levels of the company for meeting our stakeholders’ expectations. The insights gained from the Scorecard also are shared across the enterprise, to better inform our business strategy, day-to-day decision making, messaging and communications.

National and Regional Advisory Boards

The National Advisory Board was formed in 2003 for the purpose of bringing together Allstate’s senior leadership with a cross section of exclusive agents and exclusive financial specialists from around the country. The mission of the board is to maintain and enhance the dialogue among leadership, agency owners and financial specialists to address national agency/company business issues and work together to develop solutions that strengthen the agency/company relationship.

National Advisory Board members work together to provide input and develop actionable solutions for company and agency success. They help lead and implement change by:

1. Listening to, hearing and understanding key issues from agency owners across the country
2. Suggesting and exploring ideas and advising upon strategies regarding national business issues
3. Improving the implementation of business decisions impacting agencies
4. Facilitating and maintaining alignment of purpose in support of Allstate’s sales and customer service strategies
5. Sustaining an environment of trust and respect between company leadership and agency owners

A similar structure exists to support agency owner engagement within each of Allstate’s 14 Regional offices in the U.S. as well as for Allstate Canada. These Regional Advisory Boards typically include agency owners who are involved in the National Advisory Board, as well as additional agency owners who represent the interests and concerns of fellow agents in their respective regions. These Regional Boards communicate directly with Allstate’s Field Senior Vice Presidents and their staff to provide periodic feedback, raise issues and collaborate on key initiatives.

Stakeholders Communication

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How We’re Doing

The Reputation Scorecard key performance indicator was established in 2010 to measure how our reputation — which refers to the level of trust, respect, confidence and admiration earned and kept by the company’s diverse stakeholders — changes over the years. While our overall reputation remained relatively unchanged in 2011, we came away with valuable insights from each group on their expectations and our performance against them. By understanding our position with all of our stakeholders and what drives reputation for each group, we’re ensuring that their voice is represented in our decision-making processes.

Because the Scorecard is a relatively new metric for us, we are still learning how we can best use it to accurately report on our reputational performance. For example, we have found that we have different reputation standings with each of our stakeholder groups, making it difficult to accurately assess changes in our overall reputation. As a result, in future reports we will provide information on how we are building relationships with different stakeholder groups and the results of these efforts — rather than reporting an aggregate score. We will continue to include information on the Reputation Scorecard results. We also will highlight how we’ve integrated insight from the Scorecard into business planning and implementation, helping us tailor our programs and communications.

Two examples of programs that were informed by the results of the Reputation Scorecard:

Claims Satisfaction Guarantee: The Reputation Scorecard emphasized that reliable and dependable claims services are critical priorities for our customers. In 2011, Allstate piloted the Claims Satisfaction Guarantee, which is being launched in most states in 2012. Through the Claims Satisfaction Guarantee, eligible customers who are dissatisfied with their experience on a paid auto claim can receive a credit to their auto policy.

“The Savage Truth on Money presented by Allstate”: Several stakeholders said they expected Allstate to use more effectively its influence to better society. Through the Allstate-National Journal Heartland Monitor polling series, we learned that personal financial education was an important issue for our stakeholders, particularly in a challenging economy.

Armed with this information, Allstate worked with nationally known personal-finance expert Terry Savage to create a series of high-quality events, led by Savage, to educate customers on the keys to financial planning. The events helped Agency Owners showcase their financial-planning expertise and demonstrate Allstate’s full suite of products and services.

The program helped consumers better understand their financial options and opportunities — as evidenced by increased demand for the seminars. It also helped Allstate meet a request from agency owners for tools to help build their businesses — as evidenced by a 13 to 19 percent increase in life insurance sales by participating Agency Owners.

Looking Forward

We will continue to look to our stakeholders for important insights on a wide range of issues and topics. In particular, we are committed to hosting a stakeholder panel twice per year to review current and future strategic plans for Allstate, including our sustainability strategy. Members of the panel will be selected based on the value of their engagement, and will be reevaluated before and after each meeting.

We also will continue to find new ways to incorporate results from our Reputation Scorecard into strategy development, communications, and innovative products and services. Giving stakeholders greater input strengthens our relationships, builds our reputation and creates new business opportunities.

Key Performance Indicators and Goals