Strategic framework
Focusing on the things that matter for our business
Sustainability is about the way we do business
Insurance acts as a societal safety net for us all. We use our expertise as a risk manager to enhance resilience to natural, societal, economic and financial risks. Living up to our purpose, create a brighter future together, will strengthen our core business and have a positive impact on our performance as an underwriter, investor and employer. With changing customer expectations and an increasing demand for social and environmental engagement, sustainability is increasingly becoming a driver for value creation. Our purpose inspires us to leverage our business model to scale positive impact for customers, people and planet and to build partnerships that can drive transformative change.
Sustainability highlights 2023
Over the past 12 months, we have continued to move forward on our sustainability journey. The core of our approach hinges on three focus areas – Planet, Customers and People.
Materiality: what matters most to us
We want to work together with our employees, customers, investors and society to create a brighter future. To do this, it is necessary to involve these stakeholder groups in our decision-making process – and to understand what issues matter most to them. As the field of sustainability is rapidly evolving and we strive to have a clear view on the most material issues going forward, we conduct a full materiality assessment every three years as part of our strategic cycles.
In 2022, we carried out a complete update to our materiality assessment in order to understand which sustainability-related issues are most relevant to internal and external stakeholders. The 2022 assessment included both quantitative and qualitative analyses, insights generated from leading big data tools, and direct engagement with 10 different stakeholder groups including more than 8000 employees and 500 customers. Using this information, we identified 23 sustainability topics and prioritized them based on their importance to our stakeholders (y-axis) and their potential for future business impact (x-axis).
The outcomes of the 2022 materiality assessment were key inputs for creating our new strategic cycle and sustainability framework. This refreshed framework builds upon our previous three sustainability pillars and will take effect in 2023. The results illustrated in the matrix below have been validated through numerous expert interviews. The purpose of these interviews was to validate the results and provide input to defining the next three-year strategic cycle for sustainability. A few topics were slightly moved to the right, meaning that the experts estimated the potential business impact to be higher than initially indicated by the surveys. As a final step, the Board endorsed the materiality matrix.
Sustainability focus areas
Our sustainability framework consists of three focus areas – Planet, Customers and People.
- Planet: We will focus on achieving net-zero outcomes, while also helping to improve the resilience of our planet and society.
- Customers: Working closely with our customers, we will grow solutions that support customers’ transition to a net-zero future, while also encouraging people to adopt more sustainable lifestyles, enabling them to thrive today and flourish tomorrow.
- People: As a global employer and provider of protection solutions to millions of people, we are actively supporting our people to remain employable for the long-term, while addressing customer and societal needs.
These three focus areas are intertwined. Innovative underwriting and claims solutions offer positive results for customers that can also benefit people and planet. Through responsible investment, we can grow the positive impact of our invested assets.
Key Group-wide sustainability targets
We have set the following targets for each of our focus areas.
Planet
- In our operations*, we aim to achieve net-zero by 2030 through a 70 percent absolute reduction in emissions by 2029 (compared to a 2019 base year) and by increasing investment in carbon removal.
- In Investment Management, we aim for our investment portfolios to be net-zero by 2050. We intend to engage with the top 65 percent emitters of financed emissions that have not set science-based targets. We also committed to investing 5 percent of our proprietary investment portfolio to impact investments by 2025. With those investments, our target is to help avoid 5 million metric tons of CO2-equivalent emissions every year.
* Cover-More, Farmers Group, Inc. and its subsidiaries, joint ventures and third party vendors are out of scope.
To provide up-to-date and relevant information about our performance, we report against the most respected sustainability reporting standards and participate in a number of ratings and indices, such as CDP, FTSE4Good, EcoVadis CSR Performance Monitoring Platform, MSCI ESG and Sustainalytics.
Signatories
We believe sustainability is too complex and interconnected a topic to be tackled on our own. Therefore, we have become a signatory of a number of global initiatives that help us advance our work in collaboration with industry and global peers.
Since 2019, Zurich has been a signatory to the Business Ambition for 1.5°C Pledge aimed at limiting average global temperature increases to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
Zurich became a signatory to the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) in July 2012. This UN supported global investor initiative, is designed to provide a framework for better integration of environmental, social and governance factors into investment practice.
Downloads
As a signatory to the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), Zurich reports on its progress.
Zurich joined UN Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance as a founding member in 2019, committing to a net-zero-emission portfolio of investments by 2050.
The United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) Principles for Sustainable Insurance (PSI) serve as a global framework for the insurance industry to address environmental, social and governance risks and opportunities. Zurich became a signatory in 2017. Our progress report can be found in the integrated sustainability disclosure (ISD) in the Annual Report.
Zurich Santander Insurance America is a member of the UNEP FI Principles for Sustainable Insurance through the membership of the Zurich Insurance Group. Zurich Santander Insurance America is a joint venture between Zurich and Banco Santander created in 2011, with Zurich being the majority owner. Read more about sustainability at Zurich Santander in the Zurich Santander Sustainability Report 2023.
Statement of continuing support
Zurich became a signatory of the UN Global Compact in July 2011 because we believe that being a responsible company is fundamental to our long-term sustainability. As a signatory, we are committed to aligning our strategy, culture and day-to-day operations with the Global Compact’s 10 universally-accepted principles in the areas of human rights, labor, environment and anti-corruption.
The principles of the Global Compact complement our purpose, values and Code of Conduct, and all Zurich employees are expected to live up to them. We are committed to embracing, supporting and enacting these principles within our sphere of influence, and we will regularly communicate our progress.
Zurich is a founding member of WEF’s Good Work Alliance, a global, cross-industry group of forward-thinking companies striving to build a more resilient, equitable, inclusive and human-centric future of work.
