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2014 Corporate Responsibility Report

Overview of material issues

Business solutions

Our efforts to support sustainable progress by expanding re/insurance protection focus on the following themes:

  • Natural catastrophes and climate change
  • Renewable energy, especially offshore wind
  • Agricultural risks
  • Longevity
  • Insurance in emerging and developing countries

Risk intelligence

When trying to identify sustainability risks we may want to avoid in our re/insurance transactions and investments, we pay special attention to the following eight sectors or issues:

  • Animal testing
  • Dams
  • Defence industry
  • Forestry and logging
  • Human rights and environmental protection
  • Mining
  • Nuclear weapons proliferation
  • Oil and gas

Stakeholder dialogue

Our dialogue with stakeholders, which aims to form effective responses to key risks facing society, currently revolves around five Top Topics closely linked to our core business:

  • Advancing sustainable energy solutions
  • Funding longer lives
  • Managing climate and natural disaster risk
  • Partnering for food security
  • Supporting financial stability

Our footprint

Given the strategic importance of climate change for our business, our priority is to reduce CO2 emissions and energy consumption; furthermore, we apply Group-wide principles to our sourcing activities:

  • CO2 emissions
  • Energy consumption
  • Sourcing

Active in society

The Swiss Re Foundation seeks to empower communities to build risk resilience by using the expertise from our core business and by focusing on these areas:

  • Climate change
  • Natural hazards
  • Water
  • Society

Our employees

As a typical knowledge company, we have identified four topics that are both beneficial to our employees and have a tangible link to our longer-term performance:

  • Diversity and inclusion
  • Development and training
  • Employee relations
  • Compensation and benefits