What About Some Trust Insurance?

A few years back, meeting in its London headquarters, Clowns International issued a strong advisory to its membership that each should strongly consider buying pie insurance.  Pie insurance would protect against the risk of being sued by spectators who after being smashed in the face with the creamy concoction might not appreciate the joke.  Although no clown had been sued for such an incident, Clowns International believed it “just a matter of time” before some pie-face instigated a suit.

Of course there are many other forms of insurance which to the average person seems a bit strange.  We all know about people’s noses, legs, arms and other body parts being insured.  I read about a famous Australian cricketer named Merv Hughes who insured his moustache for $400,000.  And today’s fascination with vampires has produced a demand for vampire and werewolf bite insurance.

In the wake of our country’s budget problems, ever increasing deficits, Wall Street lies and misrepresentations, and some corporate officers and financial professionals’ greed, the thought occurred to me that we the investing and consuming public need some trust insurance.  It follows that if we are completely dependent on trusting these companies, officers, and professionals, then they ought to at least fortify our trust with insurance that would help to assure us that they are serious about integrity and straight dealing. 

There are some companies which are striving to provide a type of insurance to all their stakeholders that they indeed are serious about corporate social responsibility (CSR) and adhering to their codes of conduct.  An excellent article appearing in the March/April 2012 edition of the Washington CPA coauthored by Laurie Tish, CPA, Partner, Moss Adams, member of board of directors of NASBA and Bob Bunting, CPA, former CEO of Moss Adams, summarizes well efforts being made by about 50% of large U.S. publicly traded companies to provide to the public CSR and Code of Conduct reports.  These reports give us an assessment of these companies’ performance in environmentally sensitive and other social responsibility areas as well as how they and their employees are behaving under ethical guidelines and internal controls. 

Companies such as Adidas, McDonalds, Apple, Nike, Aviva, Coca Cola, Pepsi, Sony and many others are proactively and positively striving to give us more confidence, more trust in what they do and how they conduct themselves.  I think that’s pretty good trust insurance and I believe that any company, professional firm, government agency or other institution or organization should give the public similar assurance as to their actions and conduct.

Perhaps Wall Street and Main Street should take a lesson from the clowns.  If pie-throwing needs insurance then certainly peddling products and services under an integrity banner requires assurance to a trusting public.

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