Procurement

Swiss Life demands a high degree of responsibility from its business partners, too, in terms of implementing and meeting sustainability standards, and requires them to fulfil their obligations towards their employees, society and the environment.

Group-wide principles for sustainable procurement

To ensure that sustainable aspects within procurement are further embedded in the company and its processes, a dedicated working group will address the issue within the Group-wide sustainability organisation.

Cultivating relationships and engaging in dialogue with suppliers and service providers, as well as guiding them, are central to Swiss Life’s contribution to sustainable procurement. In 2022, Swiss Life decided to introduce a supplier management platform. It did so in order to meet the expectations in political circles and in society at large, as well as to take account of the emerging regulatory and legal tightening. Thanks to the individual sustainability assessments of its business partners, Swiss Life is able to better monitor the ecological, social and ethical risks in its supply chain and thus take another major step forward in its continuous efforts to achieve sustainable procurement.

For its insurance business, Swiss Life mainly sources products and services in the following categories:

• Professional services (such as advisory services)
• Marketing and public relations
• Human resources
• IT services and telecoms
• IT software and IT hardware
• Facility management services (security personnel, building maintenance, cleaning, etc.) and general services (refreshments, electricity, gas, etc.)
• Travel and events

When selecting suppliers, Swiss Life is also guided by ethical, ecological and economic principles and – wherever possible and practicable – works with local suppliers or at least with suppliers in OECD countries.

In Switzerland most suppliers and service providers are domestically based, though these are supplemented by business partners from the EU.

In its other core markets, France and Germany, Swiss Life also works mainly with national suppliers. In these two countries, foreign suppliers make up only a small proportion of the total.

When working with major international companies in the IT area, Swiss Life works wherever possible with their national companies at all locations so that emissions from travel are kept as low as possible.

Moreover, Swiss Life is one of Europe’s leading real estate investors and has the biggest private real estate portfolio in Switzerland. In this context, Swiss Life mainly uses external partners for architecture and design services as well as general construction services.