Maintaining a good reputation with key stakeholders is an aspect of business where risk managers can play a critical role, AIRMIC believes, so it has joined forces with the London based consultancy Reputability with the aim of publishing a communiqué setting out the principles of good reputation management.

Anthony Fitzsimmons, chairman of Reputability, said that although everyone knows that reputation is a company’s most important intangible asset, conventional risk analysis can miss important threats to reputation. “There are many reasons for this. They range from not knowing which questions to ask to an inability to ask the right questions as a result of organisational taboos. The challenge is to ensure that those responsible for managing reputation risk have sufficient authority to ask all the right questions, and to report all the answers to the right person.”

AIRMIC’s perspective is that keeping a good relationship with key stakeholders, such as regulators, investors and staff, is essential to reputation management.