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2016 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 advancing access to insurance.

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 tackle such risks is a key part of our commitment as a responsible company and of our vision to make the world more resilient.

Currently, we focus on the following themes: natural disaster and climate risks, food security, 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 cedents to transfer large risks to the capital markets.

Across our efforts, we seek to develop solutions that improve access to insurance protection, especially in emerging and developing countries. If governments and communities are financially protected against risks such as windstorms, earthquakes, drought and flooding, they can better cope with the immediate consequences of a disaster.

Just as importantly, our solutions help to create the conditions for sustained social and economic development, as they help to safeguard investments, allow governments to stabilise budgets and give people the financial stability required to build and maintain businesses.