Industry report: creating the basis to prevent greenwashing
The sixth private insurers’ sustainability report summarises the most important advances made by the industry in the 2024 reporting year. One particularly noteworthy success is the newly created self-regulatory regime to prevent greenwashing in sustainability-related unit-linked life insurance. By the end of 2024, a total of 13 insurers had voluntarily committed to self-regulation, representing more than 95 per cent of the relevant market.
The 2024 sustainability report is the sixth private insurers’ industry report and is based on surveys involving national and international primary insurers and reinsurers. It highlights the industry’s progress and commitment in terms of sustainability governance, financial investments and operational ecology.
Strong governance
This year’s report details various advances that were made in the area of sustainability governance compared to the previous year. Four out of five participating companies stated that they had formulated a sustainability or ESG strategy (+11 percentage points year on year). The level of ambition in the objectives being set is also increasing, with three out of four insurers having set themselves net zero targets by 2050 (+9 percentage points).
Sustainability approaches for investments
Various sustainability approaches were applied to financial investments in the reporting year. The systematic inclusion of ESG criteria was most frequently used for real estate at 78 per cent (+14 percentage points), fol-lowed by fixed-income investments at 73 per cent (+6 percentage points). Screening, i.e. where an investment decision is made based on predefined criteria, was used particularly frequently for fixed-income investments such as bonds at 82 per cent (+6 percentage points) and equities at 64 per cent (-3 percentage points).
Focus on quality
There were clear improvements in data quality and quality assurance with regard to companies measuring emissions from their own business activities. Almost half of the insurers surveyed stated that the majority of their data is based on precise measurements (+3 percentage points with a higher number of respondents). In addition, 58 per cent of insurers reported having their data validated externally (+17 percentage points). The industry also made improvements in many other respects in the reporting year. One example is building energy consumption, which was reduced by 12 per cent.
The final sustainability report
The scope of sustainability reporting in the Swiss insurance industry has been steadily expanding in recent years. This has led to a significant increase in the amount of information available, with the SIA’s sustainability report becoming less important as a result. Therefore, the SIA has decided to no longer publish an industry report going forward. However, the SIA will continue to work towards the sustainable development of the insur-ance industry, both now and in the future.