Corporate responsibility

Our actions are guided by sustainable, long-term value creation and have a tangible link to our financial performance.

These disclosures provide a foundation to improve investors’ and other stakeholders’ ability to appropriately assess and price climate-related risk and opportunities.

Swiss Re has a long-standing commitment to being a responsible company. A key element in our understanding of what this means is the desire to contribute to sustainable, long-term value creation. Based on our values, doing business the Swiss Re way includes:

“Taking the long-term view and playing our part in enabling sustainable progress – for stakeholders and society in general.”

This approach is also in our own best interest: it strengthens our capabilities to identify, and address, both risks and opportunities manifesting themselves in the longer run and, as a consequence, to retain our licence to operate.

Climate-related financial disclosures

Among issues that may threaten sustainable progress, climate change represents a key concern for the re/insurance business. This is why we play an active part in a task force set up by the Financial Stability Board to develop climate-related financial disclosures (TCFD, www.fsb-tcfd.org).

Starting from the premise that climate change creates physical, liability and transition risks, the TCFD’s aim is to offer consistent and effective financial disclosures that allow investors and other stakeholders to properly assess the climate risks faced by companies and to take appropriate action.

We began to implement the recommended TCFD in our 2016 Financial Report and have significantly expanded them since, devoting the whole “Corporate responsibility” chapter to this important topic. The table under Climate Governance provides an overview of the core elements of the disclosures, which are covered on the following pages.

To learn more about our overarching commitment as a responsible company and for a full account of our recent actions and achievements, we invite you to read our stand-alone 2018 Corporate Responsibility Report at reports.swissre.com/corporate-responsibility-report/2018/

The consolidated data and information reported in this part of the 2018 Financial Report, namely in these Climate-related financial disclosures (TCFD) with their sections Climate governance, Climate strategy, Climate risk management and Climate metrics and targets have been assured in parallel with the 2018 Corporate Responsibility Report and are marked with the logo . For further details please consult the Independent Assurance Report.