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2014 Corporate Responsibility Report

Creating solutions for sustainability

Our re/insurance solutions help to address key environmental and social challenges. We focus on natural catastrophes and climate change, food security, renewable energy, funding longer lives, and insurance cover in emerging and developing countries.

By managing risks and covering losses, re/insurance creates stability and enables economic growth. However, some environmental and social challenges can undermine sustainable progress if left unaddressed. Helping our clients and society at large to tackle such risks is a key component of our commitment as a responsible company.

Currently, we focus on the following themes: climate and natural disaster risks, agricultural risks, sustainable energy, and funding longer lives. We develop our solutions as part of our established risk modelling and underwriting activities or by creating innovative new products, in close cooperation with our clients and partners.

Thus, our solutions frequently include:

  • Public-sector partners: Besides direct insurers and corporate clients, we develop risk transfer solutions for, and in cooperation with, governments and various public-sector organisations;
  • Index-based insurance products: We are a pioneer in creating innovative insurance solutions that use an index to determine payments;
  • Insurance-linked securities (ILS) or cat bonds: We are a leading developer of these products, which enable large risks to be transferred to the capital markets.

An overarching goal is to create solutions that suit the special needs of emerging and developing countries: If governments and communities have financial protection against risks such as windstorms, earthquakes, drought and flooding, they can better cope with the immediate consequences of a disaster.

But, just as importantly, re/insurance protection safeguards investments, allows governments to stabilise budgets and gives people the financial stability required to get loans. In this way, our solutions help to create the conditions for sustained social and economic development.

For more information see Global partnerships