Pooling Partner Profiles
| SAINT-GOBAIN |
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It is common knowledge that multinational pooling gained initial popularity among USA, UK and Swedish multinational companies with continental Europe showing itself to be a late starter.
This imbalance has now been corrected as is reflected by the current Insurope portfolio of pools in force. Latter years have seen an increased interest from French multinationals as they start to play a greater role in coordinating operations outside France.
In former years a policy of ceding independence to overseas subsidiaries meant that pooling was deprived the central or coordinating driver which it needs to be able to function effectively. One such enlightened French multinational is Saint Gobain which set up a pool with Insurope in 1995.
As of 2011 the pool comprised some 33m Euros in annual premium spread across 53 subsidiary locations in 14 countries. The total number of employees covered by the pool is some 33,000 which is approximately 29 % of the total workforce worldwide.
Saint Gobain have adopted a “long term country project” approach to pool development. In the Netherlands for example, all subsidiaries were regrouped under a single plan in 1996 at which point in time a study was carried out to decide between a local experience-rating or multinational experience-rating approach. Results over the last 17 years have proven that the a decision to opt for the latter was a valid one.
In the United Kingdom a long term project has evolved to encourage as many subsidiaries as possible to join the pool. This has been successful due to the constructive cooperation of the pension fund managers and the nationwide adviser used by the Saint Gobain Group in the UK.
Breaking a new mould, Saint Gobain has also launched a global project in order to further explore where it makes good sense to integrate plans within the multinational pool.
The Saint Gobain pooling arrangement was initiated by Risk Manager, Claude Cassegrain who retired in May 2006. He was succeeded by Michel Rouffiac. v
