In insurance and advisory
Swiss Life offers its customers a wide range of solutions for their financial security and future provisions. Their term often extends over many years or even decades. Sustainability in product design and underwriting is therefore crucial.
As a life insurance company and based on the markets in which it operates, Swiss Life considers the climate-related risks in underwriting to be fairly low. When investing customer assets, Swiss Life recognises opportunities as well as risks.
Swiss Life has products with integrated sustainability aspects in various markets. In Switzerland, for example, Swiss Life launched a new edition of Swiss Life Premium Expert Next in 2023. This is a unit-linked solution with term-optimised, volatility-based investment management. The fund integrated in Swiss Life Premium Expert Next meets the sustainability criteria for the Swiss Life product category ESG. Another example is the asset management mandate Swiss Life Premium Delegate Prime, for which the “Environment” investment theme can be selected. This involves the inclusion of investment funds that pursue dedicated environmental objectives in addition to financial ones. In the area of unit-linked life insurance, at Swiss Life Germany an Investo pension insurance product with a “green” option is available. Depending on the client’s fund selection, various environmental and/or social aspects are taken into account while good corporate governance practices are observed at the same time. In addition to traditional funds, Swiss Life Germany also offers a broad range of funds with environmental and/or social characteristics, from which customers can make a selection in accordance with their preferences.
For third-party funds integrated in its sustainability-related insurance and investment solutions, Swiss Life has defined minimum requirements and set them down in a Group-wide guideline.
Swiss Life expects the incorporation of climate-related risks and opportunities in its business development to continue growing in importance. It is therefore developing innovative products that take its clients’ individual needs and preferences into account.
A number of divisions in the Swiss Life Group have launched local products with sustainability aspects in recent years. ESG factors are also incorporated into the advisory processes via these products and solutions. In 2022, Swiss Life increasingly integrated the relevant sustainability aspects – and with that climate aspects as well – into its advisory process and its marketing and sales documents. In doing so, the company is also meeting customers’ expectations. Swiss Life advisors therefore have an important role to play: they support customers in realising their needs and visions of sustainability.
Swiss Life is integrating its querying of (potential) customers’ individual sustainability preferences directly into the advisory processes and instruments at the divisions in accordance with the respective regulatory requirements. By querying their sustainability preferences, Swiss Life aims to enable (potential) customers to make decisions on a sound basis. Swiss Life has introduced a range of training measures to develop the relevant advisory competencies. In Germany, for example, these consist of several digital training modules which were expanded in 2023 by another “sustainable investment advisory” module. The modules can be attended in the eCampus, the training centre operated by Swiss Life. With this ambition, Swiss Life is also meeting the regulatory requirements of the European Union. Initial experience with the preferences survey shows that customers are also interested in sustainability aspects in addition to traditional factors such as costs, risks and returns. In Switzerland, too, Swiss Life is preparing a survey on sustainability preferences and its integration into advisory processes and instruments.
Further information can be found in the Sustainability Report, available at www.swisslife.com/sustainabilityreport (“Sustainability in Insurance and Advisory” section).