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

The consideration of sustainability aspects in the context of procurement is dealt with in a dedicated working group within the Group-wide sustainability organisation.

Maintaining relationships and communicating with suppliers and service providers are key components for the implementation of sustainability aspects in procurement. To this end, Swiss Life introduced a Group-wide platform for monitoring key suppliers in 2023. This platform enables Swiss Life to manage and monitor its suppliers. In 2023, all business units identified their key suppliers and started to register them. This was done 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 advertising
• Human resources
• IT services and telecoms
• IT software and IT hardware
• Facility management services (security personnel, building maintenance, cleaning, etc.) and general services (catering, electricity, gas, etc.)
• Travel

Swiss Life established a working group on sustainable procurement some years ago. All five business areas and Group functions are represented here. The working group meets regularly to coordinate sustainable procurement issues throughout the Group and to set the annual goals. Coordination on the handling and monitoring of suppliers on the Group-wide platform is carried out in this circle.

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 both countries, foreign suppliers account for only a small proportion of 5% at most.

When working with major international groups 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.