The existing studies of mutual organizations help us understand what it means at the strategic
level for an insurance company to be owned by its customers. At the same time, there
is limited literature illustrating what customer ownership means at the operations level and
how operative activities contribute to achieving the strategic goals. By taking a managerial
perspective, we explore and identify how managers of mutual insurance companies understand
and communicate the influence of customer ownership in organizing operative support
activities. For a thematic analysis of annual reports, we identified 18 mutual insurers in seven
different countries (Finland, Ireland, The Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, and United
States). As the first a"empt to provide analytical meaning and approach to managing support
activities in a customer-owned mutual company, the findings point to several new and interesting
research avenues, and they informed the creation of a tentative framework that mutual
insurance managers can exploit.