Materiality matrix
During the year under review, Swiss Life completely revised its materiality matrix. The company now reports according to a “double materiality” principle: On the one hand, this maps the relevance of nine sustainability topics to Swiss Life’s long-term business success (“outside-in”), while on the other hand it reflects the relevance of Swiss Life’s activities to sustainable development in the context of the selected sustainability topics (“inside-out”). The revised matrix meets the new requirements of the Global Reporting Initiative Standards and also covers new regulatory requirements.
In a multi-stage materiality process, Swiss Life elaborated the new material topics along the value chain together with internal and external stakeholders. From a broad range of topics based on inputs from sustainability ratings and analyses, market comparisons and regulatory developments (the “long list”), Swiss Life has compiled a consolidated and grouped overview of potentially relevant topics (the “short list”). For these topics, Swiss Life then identified possible positive and negative impacts on the economy, society and the environment. Members of the extended Corporate Executive Board played an active role in preparing the materiality analysis, which included reviewing the preselection of key topics and assessing and evaluating their relevance to Swiss Life’s business success. The result is an exhaustive list of topics relevant to Swiss Life for further evaluation.
As a next step, Swiss Life conducted an online survey asking key stakeholder groups how they rate the impact of Swiss Life’s activities on sustainable development. More than 500 respondents, including customers of all divisions, analysts, investors, journalists, business partners, service providers and suppliers, employees and representatives of companies in the sustainability field, took part in the survey.
Based on this multi-level process, a new materiality matrix has resulted that brings together the expectations of the various stakeholder groups. The results of the materiality analysis were approved by the Corporate Executive Board and presented to the Board of Directors.
Swiss Life has summarised the key issues in the matrix shown and addresses them in its reporting, in particular in the present Annual Report and Sustainability Report as well as in additional reports such as the TCFD report and the Swiss Life Asset Managers report on Responsible Investment.