Sustainability

Gjensidige defines sustainability in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. This means that Gjensidige’s activities must help to strike a balance between climate and environmental considerations, social conditions, good corporate governance and finances, to ensure that future generations have the same ability to meet their needs as we do today. Climate change increases the risk of new illnesses and the probability of physical injuries.

It is therefore important to understand the consequences of climate change to prevent and avoid losses going forward. Gjensidige has long contributed to a safer society by helping customers and society at large with loss prevention measures.

Good advice and discounts for customers who implement risk reduction measures, and sharing of information in the media and with the public authorities, are key to Gjensidige’s sustainability work. We are now working to find out how we can use our knowledge about the consequences of climate and ecosystem change in new preventive measures and to update our products. CSR is also important to us, and we will enhance our work on diversity and social inclusion in our own activities and ensure that our customers, partners, suppliers and the companies we invest in do the same.

A forward-looking understanding of risk and risk management are decisive to correctly calculate insurance prices and an essential element of Gjensidige's strategy. Finally, sustainability is about securing lives, health and assets in a sustainable manner, which is also Gjensidige’s social mission.

• We compensate for the emissions caused by the travel and household insurance for the young segment
• Customers with home insurance can choose to have a completely damaged house rebuilt as a Nordic Ecolabelled house. 

Gjensidige’s vision is to know the customer best and care the most. We strive to be the most customer-oriented general insurance company in the Nordic region and the Baltic states. The modern-day Gjensidige carries on a more than 200-year tradition of helping customers during the most difficult moments of their lives.

Our social mission and responsibility have been key factors in the emergence of the modern welfare society. It is therefore only natural that we continue and further develop our role now that society is facing new, far-reaching challenges. A consequence of this is that helping our customers and society to prevent losses, and make sustainable choices, will be a key part of our customer orientation.

Gjensidige takes steps to ensure that diversity characterises our activities and generates new ideas and perspectives in the work to achieve a more sustainable society. We want our employees to be engaged and motivated, and we encourage them to give feedback on what works well and what areas could be improved, in our annual employee satisfaction survey.

Read more about our work in the 2020 annual report, in the chapter ‘Engaged employees’.

A summary of our sustainability focus areas:

A safer society	Reducing carbon intensity	Socially responsible investments
Damage prevention Sustainable products Engaged employees Social commitment Good corporate governance	Sustainable claims handling Digital transformation Reduce our own climate footprint	SRI policy FNs Global Compact-principles Follow-up on external managers

A safer society

• We shall contribute to a safer society by working on loss prevention activities.
• Sustainable products shall reflect the needs of customers and society. We shall be a problem-solver that provides our customers with relevant services.
• We need committed employees to be able to run an efficient business and achieve our goals.
• We shall take social responsibility and support underprivileged people in different ways.
• Insurance is very important to society and therefore subject to strict regulation. Good corporate governance is decisive to achieving our goals.

The most important thing we can do to contribute to a safer society is to work on loss prevention activities. Sustainable products shall reflect customer needs, and we shall use our know-how and expertise to put the right price on insurable risks.

We shall be a problem-solver that provides our customers with relevant services. We shall utilise the loss prevention opportunities technology and digitalisation present.

Insurance is very important to society and therefore subject to strict regulation. Good corporate governance is decisive to achieving our goals.

We need committed employees to be able to run an efficient business and achieve our goals. Taking social responsibility and supporting underprivileged people in different ways are important ways of creating social commitment and a meaningful workplace.

Reducing carbon intensity

• By buying carbon offsets, we shall be climate-neutral in our own operations from and including 2020. Our long-term goal of climate neutrality will be achieved by continuously reducing direct and indirect emissions, among other things related to energy consumption and travel.
• Our biggest indirect emissions are in the claims processes. This means that cooperating with and motivating customers and suppliers to make more climate and environmentally friendly choices in connection with claims payments and encouraging more recycling and increased emphasis on the circular economy are our greatest opportunities to reduce our carbon intensity.
• We shall utilise the possibilities technology and digitalisation present for both loss prevention and sustainable rebuilding.

Responsible investments

• We shall contribute to ensuring a smooth transition to a zero-emission society.
• ​​​​​​​Our investments shall be in accordance with the group sustainability policy and Gjensidige’s ethical profile, including by ensuring compliance with the UN Global Compact principles and the UN Principles for Responsible Investment (UN PRI).

Gjensidige makes systematic efforts to ensure that the management of our investments contributes to a more sustainable world. The Group’s investment strategy and policy for responsible investments ensure a good, sustainable return on the funds invested.

In 2020, Gjensidige signed the six UN PRI principles for responsible investments, which entails a greater obligation to integrate ESG perspectives in all parts of asset management and increasingly contribute to the development of this focus area, internally and externally.

Read more about our goals on page 20 of the 2020 annual report:

Gjensidige will contribute to the attainment of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals. The Group will help to promote five of the goals in particular: Good Health and Well-being, Decent Work and Economic Growth, Sustainable Cities and Communities, Responsible Consumption and Production, and Climate Action.

The background is described in more detail on page 25 of the 2020 annual report: Gjensidige_Årsrapport_2020.pdf

Gjensidige’s sustainability goals adopted by the Board focus on three areas: a safer society, reduced carbon intensity and responsible investments. Some of the goals support more than one focus area. For example, our work on loss prevention contributes towards both a safer society and reduced carbon intensity by reducing the number of losses.

Our strategies are to inform, interact and invest sustainably:

An important contribution to Gjensidige’s sustainability work is providing advice about loss prevention to our customers and society. It is most sustainable to prevent losses from occurring, since they require the production and installation of compensation products – with associated environmental and climate footprint. However, we will be there when environmental and climate-related losses do occur. Our knowledge of losses related to ongoing and future climate change is key to our work for our customers, and contributes to a safer society.

Read more about this in the 2020 annual report, pp. 20–21: Gjensidige_Årsrapport_2020.pdf

Some of our achievements

We can look back on a year with many achievements that will benefit our customers, owners, employees and the environment, with loss prevention measures as one of the most important among them. Gjensidige has contributed to preventing losses and accidents for more than 200 years, and we will give this work even greater priority in line with the SDGs.

Safer society			Reducing carbon intensity		Socially responsible investments
Examples of our achievements: Forward-looking analysis as the basis for loss prevention Proactive loss prevention in 2020 with 9,100 risk checks/physical inspections at our customers’ premises Risk reduction measures included in the pricing of risk helped to prevent losses corresponding to NOK 1.4 billion First allocations from the Sustainability Fund for Agriculture in cooperation with the Norwegian Farmers’ Union Broad range of products that integrate sustainability in their terms and conditions, and new sustainable products launched in 2020 Contributed considerable funds to society and enhanced investment in mental health Our employees and managers have coped well in the unusual year that was 2020, with a total score among the top 10 per cent in the financial industry in Peakon’s industry benchmark		Examples of our achievements: Climate neutral in own operations in 2020 Continuous efforts to also reduce the carbon intensity of our claims processes Implemented tools for supplier follow-up of sustainability requirements and compliance with the Global Compact principles Signed TCFD (Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures) Gjensidige voted best digital insurance company in a survey carried out by BearingPoint in 2020		Examples of our achievements: Signed UN PRI Certified one building to BREEAM-NOR Excellent standard and working to achieve BREEAM In-Use certification of a further two Carried out analyses of the portfolio corresponding to climate risk Measured the carbon footprint of the equity and property portfolio The EU classification system of environmentally sustainable economic activities applied to general insurance

Read more about created values in the the Annual report 2020

The EU Sustainable Finance Taxonomy has been adopted as a contribution to the European Green Deal. From 2022, a listed company with more than 500 employees must report what percentage of the company’s turnover and investments can be classified as sustainable, and special sustainability criteria apply to insurance. Gjensidige bases the work on further developing our products in a more sustainable direction on these regulations.

The following outlines the criteria and our associated efforts:

1. Excellent modelling when pricing climate risk

Gjensidige has extensive experience of processing claims related to climate risk and weather-related events. We use sophisticated modelling as the basis for our prices. Climate change will increasingly pose different types of risk than previously. As an insurance company, we are affected by different forms of climate risk, not least relating to compensation for losses caused by weather-related events. We now cooperate with the Norwegian Computing Centre on combining claims data with climate data to obtain greater insight into the relationship between climate change and losses.

2. Product design

Gjensidige motivates its customers to implement risk reduction measures, as reflected in the pricing of products. This includes giving discounts for loss reduction measures.

3. Innovative insurance coverage

To us, the transition to a green economy entails risk. The changes represent uncertainty in relation to customer behaviour, while also generating new opportunities. It is therefore necessary to develop our products in a way that stimulates more sustainable practices among both private and commercial customers. We have a good basis for our product development work in this respect, including through the new terms and conditions for commercial property launched in 2020, where customers who restore buildings to become BREEAM certified can receive higher dividends. In the third quarter, we also adjusted the terms and conditions for household contents and travel insurance for young people (product UNG forsikring). The adjustment is related to compensation for greenhouse gas emissions caused by claims processes, and is triggered by purchasing Gold Standard (GS 1385) CER carbon credits that support a project for the distribution of clean-burning cookstoves in Ghana.

4. Sharing of claims data requirement

Gjensidige already shares knowledge of the consequences of climate change with the Norwegian public authorities on an annual basis, and on request, with Denmark and Sweden. We do this to help ensure that society is better equipped to meet future climate change.

5. Claims settlement processes must be satisfactory, and it must be possible to ensure good claims processes in connection with major weather-related events, and as a result of more extensive consequences of climate change.

Gjensidige has the highest standards for following up disaster situations, to ensure that our customers receive the necessary assistance. We also aim to reduce material consumption and waste in our claims processes. We therefore support recycling and the circular economy, as well as safeguarding labour rights in our organisation and among our suppliers.