Sustainability in cooperation with corporate clients

If is a subsidiary of Sampo Group. Sampo obtained UN Global Compact membership in 2019. As part of Sampo, we work to implement sustainability on all levels and in all our operations in If.

We are driven by our close knowledge of how climate change affects people’s lives and communities in the most profound ways, often leaving those affected with sorrow and loss.

We strongly believe that we are all part of the solution the world needs. In If, we use our competence to support our customers and our influence to prove the benefits of a sustainable strategy and operations.

UN Global Compact and its 10 principles

The UN Global Compact is the world’s largest corporate initiative, with almost 13 000 corporate members. If is a member through Sampo.

UN Global Compact works to make companies around the world set strategies and operations in alignment with 10 chosen sustainability principles. The principles focus on human rights, environment, anti-corruption and labour – four areas that are important to achieve UN’s Sustainability Goals.

“By expecting sustainable behavior also from our client companies, we are working towards our ambition of actively contributing to a more sustainable society. We also want to motivate our corporate clients to comply with the UN Global Compact principles. If is the largest P&C insurance company in the Nordics and our corporate clients operate all around the world, which means our actions have global effects”, Morten Thorsrud, President and CEO of If believes.

Our focus on the UN Global Compact principles is considerable and long term.

We have implemented sustainability in our underwriting by integrating the UN Global Compact principles (above) directly into our existing Customer Due Diligence (CDD).

Our customers are assessed according to the UN Global Compact principles. This assessment is based on norm-based research from an external partner specialized in ESG (Environment, Social and Governance). Our external partner uses official information from many national and international sources for the assessment. The assessment company does not access information on If’s corporate customers or If’s customer base.

We have established internal ESG assessment teams. The assessments are used as part of our total assessment of the client relationship. If’s internal assessment teams will make decisions based on the external partner’s research and other relevant material.

We expect non-compliance amongst our clients to be rare. We notify our corporate customers and discuss with them if we have concerns that might affect our client relationship. The client company will be asked to improve relevant processes so that our client relationship can continue. The ESG assessment team can make one of the following decisions:

• Permission to proceed, but the company is under observation
• Conditional approval (permission to proceed, but the company needs to take action)
• Not permission to proceed, insurance is not offered/renewed.

We already see that clients who have been notified of a breach, are doing their best to become compliant.

Read more about responsible Underwriting at Sampo's page: Sustainable Underwriting, Sampo.