The work of the Supervisory Board and its committees

The Supervisory Board advises the Management Board in its strategic planning and projects. It decides on the matters assigned to it by law, the Articles of Association and its rules of procedure. The Supervisory Board is responsible for supervising the management of the company by the Management Board. It is comprised of ten shareholder representatives and five employee representatives, and it convened for seven meetings in 2019. One decision was made by way of circular resolution. All members of the Supervisory Board attended more than half of the meetings of the Supervisory Board in the 2019 financial year in person.

A Committee for Board Affairs has been appointed to handle the relationship between the company and the members of its Management Board relating to employment and salary; this committee also acts as the Nominating and Remuneration Committee and is composed of the members of the Executive Committee of the Supervisory Board. In the seven meetings which took place in 2019, the Committee dealt intensively with the development of the UNIQA 3.0 strategy programme, interviewing candidates for management positions in the Group, filling Management Board positions, the remuneration strategy and succession planning.

The Working Committee of the Supervisory Board is only called upon to make decisions if the urgency of the matter means that the decision cannot wait until the next meeting of the Supervisory Board. It is the Chairman’s responsibility to assess the urgency of the matter. The resolutions passed must be reported in the next meeting of the Supervisory Board. Generally, the Working Committee can make decisions on any issue that is the responsibility of the Supervisory Board, but this does not include issues of particular importance or matters that must be decided upon by the full Supervisory Board by law. The Working Committee did not convene for any meetings in 2019. One decision was made by way of circular resolution.

The Audit Committee of the Supervisory Board performs the duties assigned to it by law. The Audit Committee convened for three meetings, which were also attended by the auditor of the (consolidated) financial statements. The meetings dealt with all the documents relating to the financial statements, the Corporate Governance Report and the appropriation of profit proposed by the Management Board (each for the 2018 financial year). Furthermore, the audit of the 2019 financial statements of the companies of the consolidated group was planned, and the auditor reported on the results of preliminary audits. In particular, the Audit Committee received quarterly reports from Internal Auditing concerning audit areas and material findings based on the audits conducted.

The Investment Committee advises the Management Board with regard to its investment policy; it has no decision-making authority. The Investment Committee held four meetings during which the members discussed the capital investment strategy, questions concerning capital structure and the focus of risk management and asset liability management.

The IT Committee dealt with the ongoing monitoring of the progress of the project implementing the UNIQA Insurance Platform (new core system) over the course of five meetings.

The chairmen of the respective committees informed the full Supervisory Board about the meetings and their committees’ work.

For information concerning the activities of the Supervisory Board and its committees, please also refer to the details in the Report of the Supervisory Board.