Leadership Lessons with Simon Kutner, Senior Director of Corporate Affairs at Prudential Plc.

Allyson Kurian, Head of Corporate and Financial PR at Hanson Search, sat down with Simon Kutner, Senior Director of Corporate Affairs at Prudential Plc. They discuss the evolving demands of corporate affairs leadership, what separates reactive teams from strategic ones, and the capabilities that matter most in 2026.

What recent trends most influenced how your communications function engaged with stakeholders, media and your internal audience?

The compression of time, attention and tolerance. The contagion risk for a global company is greater than it has ever been. There was a time when a journalist would call and you had until five o’clock to prepare a response. Now a story is live instantaneously, hitting media, customers and employees all at once. Local stories take on international relevance faster than ever, and making sure that risk is recognised internally before it escalates is a drum we beat hard. Being in-house forces you to get all your ducks in a row very quickly; there is no buffer anymore.

The question I come back to constantly is: so, what? Not just what happened, but what does it mean for a customer, an investor, a regulator or someone on your front line? That must be addressed early. We are not broadcasting information. We are curating meaning. And underneath all of it are relationships. When the pace increases and sources multiply and you are not sure what is real and what is noise, relationships are what determine the outcome. They also tell you when to ignore something entirely, when it will pass and does not require a reaction.

Which PR and reputation trends do you expect to shape 2026 for in-house teams, and how are you preparing?

More than ever, reputation is borderless and you cannot contain a local issue. The tools (thanks to AI) are more sophisticated than they have ever been, but the fundamentals do not change.

It comes down to building a currency. You have to build it continuously, because in a noisy world, credibility helps you be heard.  That credibility is almost your permission to communicate, the framework on which everything else rests, particularly with senior leadership. We are advisors, ultimately. The buck stops with the decision maker, and our job is to come with a recommendation knowing that leadership may well choose a different path. To have that advisory relationship at all, you need credibility. That is your gateway into problem solving and everything that follows.

How have external audiences changed their expectations, and how is your team adapting?

They are more informed, more sceptical, and they can benchmark you against a competitor in seconds. The bar is easier to see, even if it has not necessarily moved. Bare minimum expectations, like transparency or accessibility, are now table stakes that people notice when they are missing.

For us, operating across Asian and African markets, the answer has been genuine local voices rather than translating a central message downward. We recently launched our sustainability report, using ambassadors in our markets to tell that story from the ground up. We have a global narrative that sits neatly at the top, but if you truly want to engage and educate, the so what has to resonate locally. You have to empower regional voices to carry that story in a way that connects with their reality. Reputation is not just given. It is experienced. And that distinction changes everything about how we approach our work.

How is your organisation’s adoption of AI affecting the expectations placed on you or your team?

It is the same evolution as press cuttings. What used to be a morning’s work is now a button. AI handles more of the functional load, enhances coordination and frees up time for the things that require judgment. We have recently run workshops for the team to make sure we are using it properly, building tools that work for our specific tone of voice and content needs.

But judgment is still human. Relationships are still human. In the complex situations that define this job, and we live in a world of grey, rarely with one clear right answer it is judgment and relationships that determine outcomes. Use what you have and make your working life easier, but do not confuse sophisticated tooling with sophisticated thinking. They are entirely separate questions.

How has your approach to leadership evolved as communications becomes more integrated across the business?

It is much more about shaping decisions than managing outputs. You are in the room when decisions are being made, asking the so what before something happens rather than managing the fallout after. Someone presents a great new initiative and my first question is: brilliant, so what? Why does it matter to a customer? We keep having that conversation until we get to the real answer.

The fundamentals have not changed though calm, clarity, honesty, and helping people develop their own judgment rather than simply giving them answers. There is no rulebook for building a relationship with a senior leader or a tier one journalist. You develop it through experience, and my job is to create the conditions for people to do that, to learn from it, and to build something genuine over time.

What is the most significant challenge you have faced recently in aligning communications strategy with broader organisational goals?

Time zones. Making sure no one is surprised, managing who hears what and when, across markets with different regulatory requirements, different insider list obligations and different working hours. We have a dual primary listing in London and Hong Kong, and investors stretching from the West Coast of the United States to Asia. Getting that sequence right is where an enormous amount of the real work happens. It is not glamorous and it rarely produces anything visible, but it is where credibility is won or lost, quietly and consistently, over time.

What do you think the modern in-house comms leader must master that was not essential five years ago?

Systems thinking. When something happens, the question is never just what statement do we put out. It is what does this mean across every part of the business that touches the outside world. You might have a customer-facing team on one side of the business and a distribution function on another, but the external world experiences your organisation through all of those touchpoints simultaneously.

One thing very rarely has only one impact. If I knock a glass over on this desk, my desk gets wet, the water drips to the floor and from there it finds somewhere else to go. It demands a shift from managing messaging to managing meaning. Which brings us back, inevitably, to the so what.

If you were coaching a rising in-house communications leader, what guidance would you offer?

Try to invest in relationships early and continuously. Without that foundation, nothing else in this job is possible. Journalists will not pick up the phone to you. Senior leaders will not want to talk to you. Your own team will not learn from you. Everything runs on trust.

Understand the business at every level. The more fluent you are in the business, the more useful you become and the earlier you get invited into the rooms that matter.

Build resilience. There is rarely one right answer, and people will disagree with you, whether that is a colleague, a manager or a senior leader. You cannot take it personally. Your job is to come with a problem and a solution, and someone may choose a completely different path. That does not mean you were wrong.

Finally, do not measure yourself by output volume. There will be months with nothing tangible to show because you spent that time making sure something damaging did not happen. That is the job. The value is in the confidence your presence creates, in being the person the phone gets picked up to call when there is a real problem. That is a trust thing. And it all comes back to that in the end.

Whether you’re hiring or considering your next career move, our team would be delighted to support you.

Allyson Kurian is Head of Corporate and Financial. Allyson is a specialist headhunter in corporate affairs and financial communications recruitment, focusing on mid-to-senior level roles both agency-side and in-house. 

Hanson Search is a globally recognised, award-winning talent advisory and headhunting consultancy. Our expertise lies in building successful ventures worldwide through our recruitment, interim and executive search in communications, sustainability, public affairs and policy, digital marketing and sales.