We operate a formal framework to manage environmental, social and ethical risks in our core business. The framework includes policies for a number of sensitive sectors and issues. Each of them contains a set of pre-defined criteria and qualitative standards that allow us to screen our business transactions in a consistent manner.
Swiss Re’s Group Code of Conduct expresses our commitment to sustainability and ethical business behaviour. Yet, translating the spirit of our Code to daily business operations can sometimes be challenging. For several years, our voluntary “Sensitive Business Risks” (SBR) process has offered our employees additional assistance in assessing potentially problematic transactions.
Building on this case-by-case approach, we have recently introduced an overarching framework to manage environmental, social and ethical risks in our business transactions. At present, the framework comprises policies on seven sectors and issues: defence industry, oil and gas, mining, dams, animal testing, forestry and logging, nuclear weapons proliferation, and human rights and environmental protection. Each policy contains pre-defined criteria and qualitative standards. If any of these criteria apply to a particular transaction, an SBR process must be triggered.
Our country exclusion policy, which we introduced in 2005, has been fully integrated into the new framework as part of the human rights and environmental protection policy. We continue to exclude business with, or related to, countries that have a particularly poor human rights situation and which may be associated with the regime and its commercial affiliates. At present, the excluded countries are Iran, Myanmar (Burma), North Korea, Somalia and Sudan. In addition to our country exclusion policy, we also exclude particular companies, projects or commercial activity from our book of business if warranted.
All criteria and standards of the framework are reviewed periodically to ensure that they remain current and relevant.
