As an asset owner

As a responsible investor, Swiss Life can make a relevant contribution to the positive development of society and the environment. It does this by reducing risks to society and the environment, taking corresponding measures to manage risk, but also exploiting opportunities and offering its customers appropriate investment products and solutions. The long-term protection of customer funds and the optimal allocation of risk capital are the main objectives. Invested assets must be secure, profitable, and sufficiently liquid overall. Due to the long-term nature of its liabilities from the insurance business, Swiss Life invests predominantly in fixed-income securities such as government and corporate bonds as well as equities, real estate and infrastructure. Its investment decisions have always been informed by a long-term assessment of risks and returns.

Swiss Life strives to manage the assets entrusted to it in a manner that takes into account physical and transition risks and seizes opportunities arising from the transition to a low-carbon and climate-resilient economy. Creating transparency with respect to physical and transition risks can contribute to a better understanding of the existing challenges. Recording these risks helps to assess the effects on performance. The targets are set on a sound basis in those areas that are material for Swiss Life, over which Swiss Life exerts a direct influence and in which it can achieve a corresponding impact. This is to ensure that the targeted measures take the best possible account of both risks and opportunities.

As an asset owner, the Swiss Life Group is a signatory to the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) and has various ways of exerting influence with varying degrees of impact on the investments made on its behalf. Targets that the companies in which Swiss Life invests set themselves are also taken into account when Swiss Life sets its targets. Swiss Life’s insurance divisions delegate most of their investment activities to Swiss Life Asset Managers. Swiss Life Asset Managers applies the targets of the insurance divisions to the relevant investments. The main features of Swiss Life Asset Managers’ responsible investment approach are described in the next section.

In the context of its PAM portfolio – securities, real estate and infrastructure – Swiss Life’s ambition is to make financial flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development and thus contribute to a central goal of the Paris Agreement. Swiss Life is already well positioned today in terms of selected metrics relating to the greenhouse gas emissions of the PAM corporate bond portfolio. Swiss Life wishes to maintain this position as part of the “Swiss Life 2027” Group-wide programme. In its direct sphere of influence, Swiss Life aims to reduce the carbon intensity of its directly held PAM real estate portfolio.

Further information can be found in the “Metrics and Targets” section and in the Sustainability Report, available at www.swisslife.com/sustainabilityreport (“Sustainability as an Asset Owner and Manager” section).