Allianz Life Korea CEO Cheong Mun-kuk, right, and Vice President Oliver Liebig, center, participate in a Habitat house building project as part of the insurer’s corporate social responsibility activities. / Korea Times

By Kim Tae-jong

Allianz Life Insurance believes consistency is the most important element in corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. The company has been sponsoring heart surgery for child patients since 1995 without missing a single year despite the economy enduring a series of downturns during the span.

Thanks to the firm’s continued support of non-profit organization Save the Children, about needy 400 children have been able to undergo heart operations so far.

Allianz also makes it mandatory for its executives and staff to visit community centers or engage in other activities to help underprivileged citizens.

Each of the country’s business units are linked with a sister organization among community centers or welfare facilities and employees regularly visit these places to provide help at least once a year. Much of the efforts are focused on providing job training for those with physical disabilities or help them participate in leisure activities.

Employees can also help those in need in the communities they live in. This bottom-up approach to CSR allows employees to be more autonomous and emotionally attached to the products they are involved in, according to Allianz officials.

About 30 company executives have participated in the Habitat house building projects every year, while staff members annually make kimchi, the Korean staple of pickled cabbage, and deliver briquettes for low-income families in winter.

The insurer also launched “Allianz Love Fund” in 2004, for which employees and executive members voluntarily donate a certain portion of their salary. The firm then adds the same amount of money to the fund that is raised by its employees and executives.

The firm also runs a special program to help children without parents, called “Allianz Beautiful Promise.”

Through the program employees, executive members and insurance salesmen form a support relationship with 50 such children and provide them with financial assistance and serve as a mentor until they can stand on their own feet.