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Annual Report 2025
Annual Report 2025
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Real estate management

Swiss Life Asset Managers is one of the leading institutional real estate investors in Europe. Preserving and increasing value in the long term and ensuring sustainable earnings are of central significance to Swiss Life Asset Managers. All decisions are thus oriented to a long-term asset life cycle. In recent years, Swiss Life has focused on gradually and systematically integrating ESG criteria into real estate portfolio management and asset management.

Since 2018, Swiss Life Asset Managers has participated in the annual Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB). This global standard enables the company to systematically measure sustainability aspects of the real estate portfolios evaluated and integrate them into asset and property management. The proprietary real estate portfolio has been fully within the scope of GRESB for the past three years. The participating funds represent assets under management of CHF 56 billion, corresponding to approximately 63% of total assets under management invested in real estate. All 34 real estate products submitted were awarded the “Green Star” label. Swiss Life Asset Managers continuously reviews its participation in GRESB to ensure that the benchmark continues to make an effective contribution to the management and further development of sustainability aspects. This regular review underscores the commitment to continuously developing the sustainability strategy and maintaining high standards.

To monitor the progress of carbon intensity reduction, Swiss Life Asset Managers has launched a specially developed cockpit and has integrated it into its existing IT applications. Swiss Life Asset Managers manages its entire real estate portfolio in accordance with internal guidelines such as its Responsible Property Investment Framework, which optimises environmental and social aspects across the portfolio:

  • As part of the transaction process, an ESG assessment forms an integral component of the overall due‑diligence review. It identifies sustainability opportunities and highlights potential for increasing value, at the same time detecting potential risks at an early stage in order to safeguard the long‑term value of the properties.
  • Sustainability aspects play a central role in project development, from the feasibility study to the construction decision, and are integrated into the planning process. Swiss Life Asset Managers defines minimum energy standards, examines ecological risk profiles, analyses the socio-economic effects of real estate development projects and decides on the certification of buildings according to systems such as Minergie, DGNB, SGNI, LEED, BREEAM and HQE. These certificates provide external confirmation of the properties’ quality in terms of sustainability.
  • The implementation of sustainability measures across the existing portfolio – such as comprehensive refurbishments, the use of energy‑efficient building services systems, in some cases combined with the replacement of fossil energy sources by renewable alternatives (photovoltaics, district heating, geothermal energy, river and lake water usage or pellets, for example), as well as other maintenance measures – helps reduce the portfolio’s energy consumption and the associated CO₂ emissions as well as its dependence on fossil energy sources.