Our strategic priorities

At its core, insurance has always focused on helping others overcome hardships, conquer new challenges or protect what’s important to them. For Zurich, that core purpose has been evident throughout our history. As early as the 1870s we were insuring workers facing new risks and injuries as part of the Industrial Revolution. We began offering car liability insurance for a new type of transport - automobiles - 10 years before the first Ford Model T left the factory line. In the 1920s we became the first European life insurer to offer free medical exams to policyholders.

We are proud of the role we play in ensuring the sustainable future of every customer we serve, throughout the years right up to today. But looking ahead, given the complexity and scale of challenges facing our modern world, this is not enough. We have the expertise, capability and spirit to contribute even more. That is why we decided to reset our sustainability ambition at the end of 2017 and aim to become one of the most sustainable and impactful businesses in the world.

Our Sustainability Ambition

Sustainability ambition

Our material issues

We have identified three transformational themes that we believe are material for Zurich’s future. These themes were approved by our Executive Committee in December 2017.

Supporting a global workforce in transition

How we work has changed dramatically. People are working longer, though the traditional career path is becoming less linear, while mobile technology and the internet have led to new ways of working, challenging employer-based benefits models. Zurich is helping to support these trends while protecting individuals by providing innovative solutions to ‘gig’ economy companies and workers who provide services available at the click of a button. What may be more disruptive is that the skills needed for tomorrow’s economy are changing radically, prompting one of the most profound and polarizing workforce transitions in human history.

To ensure we address the skills gap, we help young people to get a foot on the insurance career ladder through our innovative apprenticeship programs. If insurance is not their main focus, we support youth empowerment, coding and workplace skills programs in markets across the world. And we give our own employees opportunities to increase their knowledge and skills to enhance career opportunities through extensive online training, formalized mentoring and other skills-based services.

Inspiring confidence in an increasingly digital society

The digital transformation is well advanced, and it is affecting people worldwide. Today, there are more mobile phone licenses on the planet than there are people. Devices are connected and ‘smart.’ This offers enormous possibilities but also new risks. It requires being responsible in the way we work with and handle data.

Zurich is also seeking ways to complement and support digital trends with a new generation of products and services. We have established the Zurich Insurance Mobile Solutions company to ensure we make best use of all the opportunities. And we are working to contribute to improving cyber-security through risk awareness, mitigation and insurance programs.

Addressing the impacts of a changing climate

Climate change is a real concern, both to us and our customers. As an insurer we can have a positive impact by helping existing and prospective customers to better understand their exposure to climate risks. As a business, we need to keep in mind the impact of climate change on our risk profile. We can, and do, educate businesses, policymakers, communities and individuals about the implications of severe weather, drought and flooding related to climate extremes.

We support positive change, for example, by applying a risk lens to controversial issues like thermal coal. And we have proven that we can be a positive force to help others to lessen risk through our award-winning, collaborative approach to increasing flood resilience. We also strive for greater sustainability in our investments, aiming to double our impact investment portfolio to USD 5 billion, to avoid 5 million tons of CO2-equivalent emissions and improve 5 million people’s lives on an annual basis.

Our approach to materiality

A critical part of developing our sustainability ambition is to identify and prioritize issues of material importance to the company and its stakeholders. We therefore apply a materiality assessment that follows five steps:

1. Identification of our core competencies: As a global insurer, Zurich’s core skills are in risk management and investment management. Our portfolio is healthy, and balanced between property and casualty, and life insurance. Both are sustainable and profitable businesses. We have a strong financial position and can reassure our customers that we will be there when they need us to handle their claims, our shareholders that we are financially stable, and our colleagues that we have a well-earned positive reputation as a business and an employer.

2. Identification of key stakeholders and their concerns: Starting with data research with the support of Datamaran®, an external business intelligence provider, we identify a range of issues that are material to the insurance sector in general and to Zurich in specific. We benchmark this research with indices and standards such as SASB, DJSI, MSCI, and the Global Risks Report. We also gather input from customers, employees, investors, civil society & NGOs, and policymakers through interviews, meetings and surveys (see below about our stakeholders).

3. Identification of issues with business impact: We validate the input that we get from our stakeholders with key executives. We test the results with them and develop a more granular understanding of which are our most relevant sustainability issues from a business perspective.

4. Differentiation and prioritization: The quantitative and qualitative analysis results in a materiality matrix which outlines our priority issues along two dimensions: importance to external stakeholders; determined by levels of interest and concern, and business impact; which are our most relevant issues from a business perspective. From those, we identify our most material issues whereby we believe that Zurich can enhance the value of insurance for society.

5. Measurement and adjustment: Each theme will have impact targets that contribute to our overall sustainability ambition. We also use more detailed key performance indicators that are measured on an ongoing basis contributing to our overall sustainability ambition. The collaboration with Datamaran® allows us to update our materiality analysis on an ongoing basis using artificial intelligence and big data analytics to ensure emerging issues are continuously weighted into our analysis.

Our key stakeholders

Customers

The Group pursues a customer-centric strategy. We believe it is important to engage with customers to understand their business and operations, and work together to ensure responsible and sustainable business practices are in place. This enables us to make better-informed decisions on how we can support customers.

We try to understand customer needs and apply different approaches to different markets. We use Net Promoter Score methodology to listen to our customers and make improvements based on their requests and comments.

Investors

Zurich maintains a regular dialogue with key investors and proxy advisors and pro-actively keeps in contact with them through the Chairman of the Board's annual Corporate Governance roadshow where Zurich also presents its corporate responsibility strategy and achievements.

Feedback from investors and proxy advisors is included when we define the strategy, implement it and report Zurich's engagement.

NGOs, non-profit organizations and rating agencies

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs), non-profit organizations and rating agencies

Zurich approaches community investment through strategic long-term partnerships with NGOs and community organizations. These alliances include an active exchange of knowledge and expertise, enabling us to gain insights into what civil society expects from us, while contributing to our skills and resources. Zurich actively participates in several working groups that bring together stakeholders from across sectors to address key issues such as climate change and political instability. Zurich is a long-standing strategic partner of the World Economic Forum, a platform for engaging political, business, academic and other leaders in collaborative efforts.

As part of our flood resilience program, Zurich works with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Practical Action, Plan International, MercyCorps, Concern Worldwide, the National Academy of Sciences in the U.S., and two research institutions, the Wharton School and the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA).

Zurich also works with the Global Resilience Partnership which has the Rockefeller Foundation, USAID, and Sida as funding sponsors, aiming to help millions of people in Africa and Asia build more resilient futures.

To understand stakeholder expectations and good practice, we analyze competitors’ reporting. We also take into account external benchmarks and ratings, for example the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, FTSE4Good and CDP, and global principles and leading research.

Public bodies

Zurich’s Legislative & Regulatory Affairs function pro-actively engages with global, regional and local policymakers, governments and opinion leaders. Through this engagement, Zurich keeps abreast of policy trends and emerging issues and shares its insurance expertise and insights to contribute to effective policy solutions.

Zurich’s engagement with policy makers and governments is guided by the following principles:

We have an opportunity and a responsibility to proactively share our knowledge and expertise, and to participate in public policy debates to help shape effective policy solutions affecting our ability to perform our role in society, taking into account the interests of all our stakeholders – our customers, our people, our shareholders and our communities.
Compliance with Zurich Basics, our basic values and code of conduct. Among other things, Zurich Basics states that Zurich “prohibits all forms of bribery, or corruption, and any business conduct that could create the appearance of improper influence;” it commits us to “forthright and accurate communication with our stakeholders;” and “forthright, full and prompt disclosure when communicating with regulators, supervisors and governments.”
Sound analysis of public policy issues to arrive at informed engagement strategies.

We participate in discussions, workshops and taskforces related to our priority topics, including the United Nations, the International Energy Agency, the International Finance Corporation, the European Commission, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and the World Bank. We also engage with national agencies such as the UK Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC), the UK Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the ICPR (International Commission for the Protection of the Rhine), and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and its strategic steering committee for the implementation of the UN’s Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030. We have engaged with several U.S. agencies and organizations: the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), the House of Representatives, the Senate, the Department of State, the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Department of Commerce, and the Department of Homeland Security.

Local communities

Through local and global community programs, we share our resources and expertise to help build more resilient communities, adding value beyond our core business activity. We work with our employees, customers and distributors to achieve our sustainability goals. Local offices, supported by the Z Zurich Foundation, have built up their own successful community investment programs over the years. The programs identify and develop effective solutions to address social concerns and generate meaningful, positive outcomes in the communities of which we are an integral part.At Group level, we encourage and support our business units to work together with local charitable organizations. Our employees play an active role in identifying relevant local social issues, allowing Zurich and its people to focus their time and resources on making a difference. What we learn through our work with local communities helps to guide our sustainability approach, and our products and services. This also leads to a better customer experience.

Employees

Business success depends on having highly motivated employees. To ensure we have the right culture and foster an environment of accountability and empowerment, Zurich promotes open and honest two-way communication and dialogue, and listens to employees to gain insights necessary to address recurring or shared topics and issues.

As part of this process we conduct surveys, asking for feedback from employees on a range of topics including leadership, employee benefits, training and development and career development opportunities. This helps us to better understand our offerings to employees and improve them.

Sustainability is part of everything we do (225 KB/PDF)