Sustainable sales and marketing

The trust that customers have in Sampo Group’s integrity is the foundation of the company’s positive reputation. Therefore, paying attention to the risks associated with sales and marketing is important to Sampo Group. Such risks may include inappropriate customer advice and product sales; lack of clarity in terms, prices, and fees; errors in claims handling; and errors in the complaint process. To minimise the risks and increase value for the customer, Sampo Group continuously works to develop and improve customer service, and sales and marketing practices.

Governance

The Sampo Group Code of Conduct sets the group level requirements for responsible sales and marketing practices. In addition to the group level principles, the Group companies have supplementary and more detailed policies, guidelines, and processes for specific purposes. The Sampo Group Code of Conduct states that the Group strives to act in the best interest of its customers, offering products and services that customers need and want. The products and services should be fair, comprehensible, and designed to help meet the evolving needs of all customers. The Group’s sales, marketing, and product information must be professional, comprehensive, accurate, balanced, and never misleading. Sampo Group takes appropriate care to ensure that customers are given transparent and easily accessible and understandable information about the costs, risks, and conditions relating to the product or service in question, as well as the reasons leading to an underwriting or claim decision. In addition, at Sampo Group all customers are to be treated fairly and no individual customer is given preferential treatment at the expense of other customers. Insurance premiums are only based on relevant data and not on discriminating factors, such as sexual orientation, religious belief, or ethnic background. Sampo Group expects its suppliers to uphold the same standards in their own operations.

Sampo Group has controls in place to ensure that the information provided to customers is accessible, relevant, and timely before a customer commits to any purchase, and that the company satisfies all regulatory and conduct obligations. The associated controls and measures are regularly assessed and developed. Sampo Group also assesses products continuously to ensure they remain appropriate.

Customer feedback channels are offered to make it easy for customers to provide feedback on the products and services, and to complain if they are dissatisfied. Sampo Group aims to clearly inform customers of their complaint options, as well as to ensure a fair and transparent complaint process. The Group has several processes for providing remedy or contributing to remedy. In case of a customer complaint related to sales and marketing of products and services, the priority is to discuss with the customer to find a solution that is satisfactory to both parties. In addition, the Group has different kinds of customer representative functions that the customer can contact to submit a complaint. If a consensus cannot be reached, the customer is entitled to appeal to external complaints boards (or similar), in accordance with local practices in each Sampo Group country. Regardless of the outcome of appeal cases, Sampo Group always analyses how it can improve its practices.

Employee training

To ensure compliance with laws, regulations, and internal policies, Sampo Group has continuous training programmes that develop personal conduct and increase the competence of sales teams and other customer representatives. Training is given on topics such as insurance products, evaluation of risks and customer needs, legislation and guidelines, business ethics, and conflicts of interest. The training varies depending on the country and business area in question. Sampo Group also provides training to its external distributors and monitors that training requirements are fulfilled by them and products are sold to the right target group, in line with the company’s guidelines.

Remuneration

Sampo Group does not remunerate or assess the performance of its employees in a way that conflicts with the duty to act in the best interests of customers. For example, Sampo Group has no sales targets that could provide an incentive to recommend a particular insurance product to a customer when a different insurance product would better meet the customer’s needs. In addition, fixed compensation represents a sufficiently high proportion of the total remuneration in Sampo Group’s remuneration structures to avoid employees being overly dependent on variable compensation and to ensure that they act in the best interests of customers. Variable compensation programmes also include a clause that gives Sampo Group the right to cancel, in whole or in part, the payment of variable compensation, if material, non-acceptable risk-taking or breaches of internal or external business rules have materialised.