Our climate strategy
We’ve developed our climate strategy to help people, businesses and society mitigate and adapt to climate change.
What's set out by our climate strategy?
We’ve been on the front lines of climate change for many years. We help our customers recover from the devastating impacts of extreme weather events, while actively managing climate risks in our business.
Our five-point climate strategy focuses on managing our business impacts and supporting the transition to a low carbon economy.
Our ambition to double down on climate adaptation is reinforced by the first pillar of our Social Impact Strategy. It sets out our commitment to build climate resilience among affected communities.
A closer look at our climate strategy
Commit
We aim to achieve net zero emissions overall by 2050, to align with the Paris Agreement, and to halve our operations emissions by 2030.
Our plan includes reduction initiatives, such as electrifying our fleet of vehicles and reducing corporate travel.
Nearly 100% of the electricity we purchase directly in the UK is now procured from renewable sources. In 2023, we reduced the greenhouse gas emissions from our corporate real estate by 14%.
Adapt
We’re doubling down on helping people adapt to climate change.
We partner with the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust to invest in nature-based solutions and improve flood resilience. We are also committed to Flood Re’s Build Back Better scheme, which incentivises the adoption of property flood resilience measures.
Our parent company, Intact, are partnered with the Intact Centre for Climate Adaptation at the University of Waterloo in Canada. They provide practical guidance based on applied research to help people adapt to floods, wildfires and extreme heat.
Shape
There are opportunities for us to shape climate-friendly actions through our products and by raising awareness of climate change. These opportunities include:
- Guiding our customers to prevent climate-related losses, and build back in a more climate-conscious way
- Raising climate change awareness for our customers and employees. Since 2023, we focus on upskilling our employees by providing training on climate change. This helps to increase their knowledge on climate and how to support our strategy
- Leveraging our expertise to develop predictive models that will help to anticipate evolving climate-related impacts
Enable
We’re playing an active role in de-risking existing and new industries. They can both make a difference in building a sustainable future. We're doing this by:
- Creating and adapting products to help industries transition
- Engaging with our top emitters through 'Intact Investment Management' to help reduce their impact
- Targeting an underwriting portfolio that is at least 75% low carbon by 2030, as outlined in our Climate Change and Low Carbon Policy
Collaborate
We collaborate with governments and industries to accelerate the most impactful climate solutions. We are doing this by:
- Working with our peers to help the financial services industry navigate climate-related financial risks through the Climate Financial Risk Forum
- Demonstrating our commitment to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals as a participant of the UN Global Compact
- Supporting thought leadership and insurance industry benchmarking on climate change performance through our membership of the UN Principles for Sustainable Insurance and ClimateWise