Insuring a Better Future: Sustainability at Swiss Re
As the financial and personal impacts from climate change grow, the financial and insurance industries have been taking note. For some companies, that means advocating strategies to help business and society build their capacity to adapt to the effects — and reduce the causes — of climate change.
Swiss Re identified climate change as an emerging risk more than 20 years ago, long before most financial and insurance companies — or most businesses in general. A vocal advocate of mitigation strategies, climate change is now a significant component of the company's long-term risk management strategy.
Partly because of that, they top the list of the world's most sustainable companies in the industry, according to RobecoSAM, one of the world's leading corporate sustainability benchmarks "Ò ahead of more than 120 competitors in the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes review.
A leader in the economics of climate change adaptation, Swiss Re has engaged in public-private partnerships to research and foster dialogue that can help shape the global climate agenda. MIT Sloan Management Review's Nina Kruschwitz spoke with David Bresch, Head of Sustainability at Swiss Re, about his company's efforts to address the complex problem of climate change risk.