In its solutions
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 low. When investing customer assets, Swiss Life recognises opportunities as well as risks. As part of its sustainability strategy, Swiss Life has set itself the goal of meeting customer demand for sustainable solutions with its own products and solutions and structuring its product range accordingly. As part of its ongoing product development process, Swiss Life is working on sustainable insurance, pension and financial products based on customer demand.
Swiss Life has products with integrated sustainability aspects in various markets. For example, in 2024 Swiss Life in Switzerland launched Swiss Life Opportunities on the market. This is a unit-linked life insurance solution with a diverse fund universe, which includes sustainability-related funds. Furthermore, with the Swiss Life Premium Delegate Prime asset management mandate, the “Environment” investment theme can be selected. It contains investment funds that pursue dedicated environmental objectives in addition to financial objectives. In the area of unit-linked life insurance, for example, the Investo pension insurance at Swiss Life Germany also includes a “Green” option. Depending on the client’s fund selection, various ecological and/or social characteristics are supported while good corporate governance practices are taken into account at the same time. In addition to traditional funds, Swiss Life Germany also offers through its Maximo pension insurance products a broad range of funds with environmental and/or social characteristics, from which customers can make a selection in accordance with their preferences.
Swiss Life has defined minimum requirements for third-party funds used in Swiss Life unit-linked and sustainability-related investment solutions and has set them down in guidelines applicable throughout the Group.
Since 2022, Swiss Life has also been increasingly integrating the relevant sustainability aspects – and with that climate-related aspects as well – into its advisory process and its marketing and sales documents. Swiss Life advisors therefore have an important role to play: they support customers in realising their needs and visions of sustainability. In doing so, the company is also meeting customers’ expectations.
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. The modules can be attended in the eCampus, the training centre operated by Swiss Life. Experience shows that customers – while taking into account traditional factors such as costs, risks and returns – also choose products with sustainable characteristics. In Switzerland, a system of self-regulation to avoid greenwashing, approved by the Swiss Insurance Association (SIA), came into force on 1 January 2025. It sets a uniform minimum standard for sustainability-related unit-linked life insurance and defines, amongst other things, the principles for how these products are sold. Swiss Life Switzerland integrates the corresponding regulations into its advisory processes and tools within the specified implementation deadline.
Further information can be found in the Sustainability Report, available at www.swisslife.com/sustainabilityreport (“Sustainability in Insurance and Advisory” section).