Building societal resilience
The second ambition of our Group Sustainability Strategy consists of two key pillars: enhancing disaster resilience and fostering financial inclusion in both advanced and emerging economies.
Swiss Re aims to enhance societal resilience by building commercial opportunities while maintaining and exploring the boundaries of insurability for positive societal impact. This means providing insurance coverage where the basic insurance principles are fulfilled and commercial opportunities are attractive. We work with our clients (eg cedents, large and medium-sized corporates and public sector entities)1 and partners (eg international organisations, insurtech companies and non-profit organisations) to deliver impact at three levels: 1) individuals and households; 2) businesses and communities; and 3) countries and regions.
Swiss Re's two pillar strategy for building societal resilience through our core business
1 Swiss Re’s client base consists mainly of insurance companies that provide services to individuals and small and larger businesses, large and medium-sized corporates and government entities.
Business offerings across three societal levels enhance disaster resilience and foster financial inclusion
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Disaster resilience
Enhancing disaster resilience is a core element of Swiss Re’s overall business strategy. We enhance disaster resilience by offering re/insurance products and services, including specific offerings related to climate adaptation.
Losses from floods, storms, earthquakes and other natural catastrophes can affect millions of lives and physical assets, many of which are still uninsured. Economic growth, urbanisation, growing asset concentration in exposed areas as well as climate change, in particular over the last 30 years, have contributed to increasing losses from natural catastrophes. Providing natural catastrophe re/insurance represents a business opportunity while generating significant benefits for our clients and for society at large.
According to a recent Swiss Re sigma report, the difference between economic losses caused by natural catastrophes and the portion of those losses that are insured – known as the protection gap – amounted to USD 172 billion in 2023.1 Reducing the protection gap is a meaningful way to contribute to society’s ability to bounce back more quickly from disasters.
Learn more about selected examples of re/insurance products and solutions that support the disaster resilience pillar of the "building societal resilience" ambition of our Group Sustainability Strategy:
Disaster resilience solutions
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Fathom chosen to support Canada federal government initiative to address flood hazard knowledge gap
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Morocco: a challenging hot spot for farmers, society and crop re/insurance
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Baseball-sized hail falls, Swiss Re Corporate Solutions pays: Baylor University parametric HAIL success story
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Climate Risk Scores: Informed property-portfolio steering decisions
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Swiss Re part of PPP to develop agriculture insurance scheme in Uzbekistan
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Swiss Re supports Blue Bond providing $500 million for ocean conservation in Gabon
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Marine conservation to protect the Galápagos
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Cat bond provides Chile with financial protection against earthquakes
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STORM – Landfall to liquidity in 14 days
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FLOAT
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Building climate resilience in Africa
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Drought is insurable
Footnote
Footnotes
1sigma 1/2024: Natural catastrophes in 2023: gearing up for today’s and tomorrow’s weather risks, Swiss Re.