The Swiss Re Foundation
We want to build resilient societies.
Who we are
The Swiss Re Foundation reflects Swiss Re's social and humanitarian values. Our vision is to help societies build capacity to mitigate health, environmental and economic risks, as well as to recover quickly from setbacks. We do this in emerging countries and where Swiss Re has office locations.
Together with our partners we aim to achieve measurable and sustainable impacts. We support them not only through evidence-based grant funding, but also by giving them access to the broad expertise of Swiss Re's employees, allowing them to learn, prototype and scale effective solutions. In this way, we strive to foster resilient societies and support Swiss Re's sustainability objectives.
For the 2019 Swiss Re Foundation Entrepreneurs for Resilience Award, we chose Kenya-based CarePay as the winner. CarePay has developed a mobile wallet that lets people save, pay for and manage healthcare using a single app.
Our ambition
2019 was a year of transformation for the Swiss Re Foundation, as we began to put our strategy for 2019-2021 to the test. We strengthened our resilience-building in three areas, which are aligned with Swiss Re's 2030 Sustainability Ambitions: natural hazards and climate risk management, access to health and income opportunities, and innovation to build societal resilience. To further reinforce our contribution, we phased out water as a focus area and will wind down the ReSource Award programme in 2020.
Our 2019 activities focused on healthcare access. For example, we teamed up with the digital health pioneer Living Goods and dedicated our Entrepreneurs for Resilience Award to digital innovations that make healthcare more easily accessible to underserved communities. For the first time, we also supported a randomised controlled trial of the University of Zurich to inform our future activities: Researchers will test the impacts of a health insurance product designed for unprotected lowincome families in Kenya.
At the Swiss Re Foundation we are able to amplify our impact by inspiring Swiss Re's employees to support our partners with their time and know-how. By participating in our skills-based volunteering initiatives and Community Days, they can experience resilience-building outside their daily business in hands-on situations.
Our achievements 2019
The Swiss Re Foundation in 2019
Illness and disease are universal, whilst access to healthcare is not. The Swiss Re Foundation is partnering with Living Goods, a pioneer in digital health solutions, to strengthen healthcare delivery in poor, rural areas of Kenya by recruiting and training community health workers who bring quality healthcare right to people’s doorsteps.