SAGA PLC SAGA PLC
Environmental, Social and Governance Report 2024
Acting on climate change | Strengthening our | Governance | ||
and biodiversity | exceptional culture |
In this report
Introduction
- A message from our Group Chief Executive Officer
- Highlights of 2023/24
- Who we are
- Our approach to ESG
- Our double materiality assessment
8 Purposeful service and product offerings
8 Customer accessibility and satisfaction
- An age- and menopause-friendly employer
- Case study: Exceptional chauffeurs
10 Case study: Health and wellbeing
Acting on climate change and biodiversity
12 Key performance indicators
12 Carbon emissions
- Climate change resilience
- Our carbon footprint
13 Case study: Carbon reduction activity
14 Oceans and biodiversity
14 Case study: Partnerships to
promote biodiversity
14 Waste management
14 Case study: Office furniture giveaway
Strengthening our exceptional culture
16 Key performance indicators
16 Gender pay and female representation
17 Supporting our colleagues
17 Diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I)
17 Our DE&I memberships
18 Supporting our communities
18 Our community impact
Governance
20 Our ESG governance framework
21 Business ethics and compliance
21 Data privacy and security
21 Remuneration
21 Fair and decent work
22 Looking ahead
22 Our memberships and ESG ratings
About this report
Purpose of this report
Following the launch of our Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) strategy within the 2023 Annual Report and Accounts, this is Saga's first standalone ESG report. This report details our progress and next steps on our ESG journey.
Framework alignment and scope
This report has been prepared with reference to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Standards. We aim to continue to work towards full alignment with best practice standards in future reporting. Our content index, explaining the extent of our alignment to the GRI Standards, is available on our website here.
We report annually, with this report covering the period from 1 February 2023 to 31 January 2024, in alignment with our financial reporting. This report captures all entities within the Saga Group as listed within the 2024 Annual Report and Accounts.
The statistics used in this report are presented as at 31 January 2024.
Assurance approach
This report has been reviewed and approved by the highest governing body of the Group, the Saga plc Board of Directors (the Board). The ESG disclosures within our 2024 Annual Report and Accounts (including our climate-related disclosures) have been externally audited. This ESG report has not been externally assured, although we will consider this approach for future reporting.
Find out more and get in touch
This ESG report should be read in conjunction with the disclosures made within the 2024 Annual Report and Accounts here, including our 2024 Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) report. Should you have any comments or queries on this report, please get in touch by emailing ESG@saga.co.uk.
Saga plc | 1 |
ESG Report 2024 |
Acting on climate change | ||
and biodiversity |
A message from our
Group Chief Executive Officer
Continuing our ESG journey
At Saga, we recognise the importance of ESG matters and, over the past year, we have made significant progress in our ESG performance and direction
of travel.
In early 2023, we launched Saga's first ESG strategy, including a focus
on championing positive ageing, acting on climate change and biodiversity, and strengthening our exceptional culture. Our strategy ensures that the business, and its stakeholders, are clear on our priority areas of focus and where we can improve performance in the coming years. Following the launch of our strategy, we published supporting key performance indicators (KPIs) and targets against which we will track and report
on our progress going forward.
Our highlights during the year included calculation of our Scope 3 (supply chain) emissions footprint, the launch of a diversity review across our colleague base, and the delivery of the second part of our training on the experience of ageing to all colleagues. We have also signed the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) commitment letter, signalling our intent to work towards setting a science-based target to achieve net zero by 2050.
The important themes captured under the banner of ESG are priority areas for Saga, which we see as essential to ensuring the future success of our brand. There is much more to do, and we hope our ongoing efforts will drive positive change.
Mike Hazell
Group Chief Executive Officer
Strengthening our | Governance |
exceptional culture |
Saga plc | 2 |
ESG Report 2024 |
Acting on climate change | Strengthening our | Governance | ||
and biodiversity | exceptional culture |
Highlights of 2023/24
"The important themes captured under the banner of ESG are priority areas for Saga, which we see as essential to ensuring the future success of our brand."
Mike Hazell
Group Chief Executive Officer
We completed our double materiality assessment, helping us focus our efforts on what is important for Saga.
We launched our ESG strategy, supported by robust KPIs and targets designed to drive ESG performance in the coming years.
We signed the SBTi commitment letter, confirming that we will work to set a science-based emission reduction target aligned with the SBTi's target-setting criteria.
We developed our Supplier Code of Conduct, establishing the core principles supporting the highest business and ethical standards within our own businesses and our supply chain.
We commenced a diversity review across our colleague base, helping us ensure that we understand our people, and to set diversity targets for the future.
We launched the second part of our 'Basics of Ageing' training, helping our colleagues to better understand our valued customers.
Saga plc | 3 |
ESG Report 2024 |
Acting on climate change | Strengthening our | Governance | ||
and biodiversity | exceptional culture |
Who we are
Our products and services
Delivering exceptional experiences every day to serve the needs of older people.
At the heart of our business model is our drive to know more about our customers' wants and needs so that we are best placed to serve them. Applying this approach over the past 73 years
has enabled us to become the UK's specialist provider of products and services to people aged over 50 in the UK. Saga has become one of the most trusted brands among UK consumers in this demographic and is recognised for its high-quality products and exceptional standards of service across Cruise, Travel, Insurance, Money, and Publishing.
Saga plc is a publicly traded company, listed on the London Stock Exchange, headquartered in London, UK and employing more than 3,600 colleagues. We operate primarily in the UK, and offer international cruise, destination travel, insurance and money services to UK customers.
Cruise
We provide our customers with ocean and river cruises to a wide range of destinations on board our fleet of boutique, luxury ships.
Key activities
We offer customers a truly all-inclusive cruising experience, with fine dining and drinks, gratuities,
a chauffeur service, private balconies with all cabins and selected shore excursions.
Customers sail with additional peace of mind through our included travel insurance, our price promise guarantee and our 'Love it first time' guarantee for newcomers.
Travel
We offer customers a variety of handcrafted experiences, including hotel holidays, escorted tours and tailor-made travel.
Key activities
We provide customers with expertise, ease and reassurance through home-to-airportpick-ups across our touring range, local hosts at our hotels and flexible dining for our tailor-made getaways.
We offer further peace of mind through an escrow agreement which safeguards customer money until they return from their holiday.
Insurance
We provide our customers with tailored insurance products, principally motor, home, private medical and travel insurance.
Key activities
We offer products to suit a variety of needs from our lower-cost standard one-year policies through to our premium three-yearfixed-price products.
Alongside our in-house underwriter, we use
a third-party panel of underwriting partners to ensure that customers receive the best possible price.
Money
We partner with specialist third parties to deliver a range of personal finance products, including savings accounts, equity release, legal services, mortgages and investments.
Key activities
We offer customers easy-to-use products and services tailored to them, with the added security and support of the Saga brand. We source and manage partners to provide customers with an exceptional service.
Publishing
Experience is everything
is everything Experience
Experience is everything
Louise Minchin Fit, fearless & finally getting some sleep
InfullInside HARRY REDKNAPP
PAUL LEWIS SUSIE DENT
Weaver in Sigourney &growing randchildren
We engage our audience through the award-winning Saga Magazine, alongside regular updates in the form of our increasingly popular digital newsletters.
Key activities
We blend the experience of our magazine columnists and design team with high-profile guest exclusives, to deliver purposeful and insightful content that informs, inspires and entertains our readers. Our digital newsletters also provide readers with high-quality digestible articles across a range of topics.
We employ more than
3,600
colleagues
2022/23 - more than 4,000
Customers travelled
62.7k
2022/23 - 47.3k
Customers travelled
57.8k
2022/23 - 47.2k
Policies in force
1.5m
31 January 2023 - 1.7m
Customers
144k
2022/23 - 139k
Magazine subscribers
121k
2022/23 - 159k
Saga plc | 4 |
ESG Report 2024 |
Acting on climate change | Strengthening our | Governance | ||
and biodiversity | exceptional culture |
Our approach to ESG
We continue to enhance our approach to ESG and evaluate our impact as we endeavour to deliver exceptional experiences every day to serve the needs of older people.
We aim to operate as a responsible and sustainable business and we are aware of the increasing expectations of stakeholders. In 2023, we launched our ESG strategy and, over the past year, we have worked to embed the principles of this strategic framework to drive greater scale, ambition and importantly, impact, in our ESG performance.
Our ESG framework
Purpose | Saga exists to deliver exceptional experiences every day to serve the needs of older people. | ||
Strategic | Acting on | Strengthening | |
pillars | Championing | ||
climate change | our exceptional | ||
positive ageing | |||
and biodiversity | culture | ||
Strategic | The ambition to enhance the | As we provide opportunities | An engaged, inclusive and |
objectives | lives of older people is at the | for older people, we must | diverse culture encourages |
heart of everything we do. | ensure that we protect | our colleagues to thrive. | |
our environment. |
ESG strategy
Our ESG strategy, informed by our double materiality assessment, serves as a roadmap for ESG decision-making and generating meaningful change.
The three pillars of our strategic framework: championing positive ageing; acting on climate change and biodiversity; and strengthening our exceptional culture, encapsulate our priority ESG topics, aligned to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The process used to identify the priority topics captured by this
KPIs | Customer transactional |
net promoter score | |
(tNPS). |
Proportion of customers determining that it is 'extremely easy' to deal with Saga.
Trustpilot score.
Proportion of colleagues completing training on the experience of ageing.
Calculation of carbon baseline, including Scope 3 emissions.
Development of net zero pathway.
Cruise ship environmental ratings.
Proportion of fleet with shore power connection.
Partnerships on oceans and biodiversity.
Female representation in leadership positions.
Female Board representation.
Ethnic minority Board representation.
Completion of colleague diversity review.
framework is outlined on page 6.
Our ESG strategy is supported by KPIs and targets against which we track our progress, and these are detailed later in this report.
We are committed to delivering against our ESG responsibilities and continuously improving in this area. We recognise that sustainability is a journey, not a destination. We will be transparent and accountable in our sustainability efforts as we strive to realise our ESG goals.
Priority | Customer accessibility | Carbon emissions. | Diversity, equity and |
topics | and satisfaction. | Oceans and biodiversity. | inclusion (DE&I). |
Purposeful service and product offering.
Related
SDGs
Governance A governance framework which ensures that how we work is as important as what we do and why we do it.
Saga plc | 5 |
ESG Report 2024 |
Acting on climate change | Strengthening our | Governance | ||
and biodiversity | exceptional culture |
Our double materiality assessment
Our double materiality assessment informed our ESG strategy, supported by comprehensive analysis of the ESG landscape and insights gathered from over 1,300 of our internal and external stakeholders, including colleagues, customers, suppliers, investors and industry bodies. We collected insights through online surveys and detailed discussions to understand what is important for Saga and our stakeholders.
To identify material topics that Saga should prioritise, we plotted the importance of ESG topics to stakeholders (Y-axis) against their potential impact on our business (X-axis). The determination of business impact was guided by our corporate risk methodology, taking into account residual risk factors.
Double materiality assessment
Data privacy | ||||||
Customer accessibility and satisfaction | and security | |||||
Health safety and wellbeing | ||||||
Fair and decent work | Business ethics and compliance | |||||
Human rights and | ||||||
modern slavery | ||||||
Employee engagement, | Oceans and biodiversity | |||||
training and development | ||||||
DE&I | ||||||
stakeholders | service and | |||||
Circular economy | ||||||
Sustainable | ||||||
supply chain | ||||||
Innovation | Purposeful | |||||
Climate change resilience | ||||||
to | Supporting | product | Carbon emissions | |||
Importance | offerings | |||||
communities | ||||||
Moderate | High | Very high | ||||
Tracking | Actively | Need active | ||||
monitoring | management | |||||
Impact to the business
Our strategy ensures that the business and its stakeholders are clear on our priority areas of focus, and where we can improve performance in the coming years."
Our holistic approach to double materiality
We conducted additional strategic analysis, alongside our materiality assessment, to ensure a holistic understanding of our ESG priorities.
Through conducting a maturity assessment, competitor analysis and horizon-scan, we identified where a step-change was needed. This enabled us to determine the priority topics for Saga, forming the foundation of the pillars of our strategic
ESG framework.
Our materiality analysis identified eight key topics relevant to our business, however, not all were incorporated into our strategic framework. Specific topics such as health; safety and wellbeing; fair and decent work; business ethics and compliance; and data privacy and security were deemed adequately addressed and/or business as usual, while others were identified as requiring further focus. We recognise the significance of these topics and commit to ongoing reporting on our progress in these areas, in addition to the matters covered within our strategic framework.
Saga plc | 6 |
ESG Report 2024 |
Acting on climate change | Strengthening our | Governance | ||
and biodiversity | exceptional culture |
Championing positive ageing
The ambition to enhance the lives of older people is at the heart of everything we do.
Customer tNPS
59
Colleagues trained on the experience of ageing
85%
Related SDGs
Customers determining that it is 'extremely easy' to deal with Saga
73%
Trustpilot score
4.3 (Excellent)
Saga plc | 7 |
ESG Report 2024 |
Acting on climate change | Strengthening our | Governance | ||
and biodiversity | exceptional culture |
Championing positive ageing
Key performance indicators
TargetsCurrent performance Progress
tNPS of 60 for the Group | 59 | |||||
and each business unit by | ||||||
December 2027 | ||||||
65% of customers to | 73% | |||||
determine the ease of dealing | ||||||
with Saga as 'extremely easy' | ||||||
by December 2027 | ||||||
Saga plc to maintain an | 4.3 | |||||
'Excellent' score on Trustpilot | (Excellent) | |||||
90% of colleagues to | 85% | |||||
complete 'Basics of Ageing' | ||||||
training and pass the criteria | ||||||
for understanding ageing by | ||||||
December 2024 | ||||||
Key | Currently achieving | In progress | ||||
Purposeful service and product offerings
Purposeful products for people over 50 are central to Saga's success. Stakeholders recognise Saga's role in curating purposeful service and product offerings, including travel opportunities,insurancebrokingandresponsible underwriting and investment options.
During the year, we launched new products including a range of fixed savings accounts; legal services including wills, probate and lasting powers of attorney; investment ISAs; and mortgages. Our new range of mortgage products are all designed for people over 50, offering assistance with first-time purchases, remortgages, buy-to-let and equity release to fund inter-generational support.
Customer accessibility and satisfaction
Our double materiality assessment shows that customer accessibility and satisfaction is integral to Saga's work and is considered a materialtopicbystakeholdersandthebusiness.
We aim to accelerate digital journeys for our customers, making interactions easier, while continuing to deliver high levels of service within our contact centres.
We track our customers' views on our products and the ease of accessing our services.
Our high scores on review sites, including Trustpilot, demonstrate the exceptional experiences provided to our customers.
What our customers think
We are proud of our 'Excellent' Trustpilot score, evidencing our focus on exceptional service and product offerings.
Excellent reviews
38,195
Full marks for an excellent service
We have had home and car insurance cover with Saga for some time. We find them both competitive and nice people to deal with. Anything that can't be done online can be quickly and pleasantly dealt with by a quick call to their helpline."
Just had a brilliant cruise to the Norwegian Fjords. Fantastic 5* service,
no complaints at all. Would highly recommend."
Saga plc | 8 |
ESG Report 2024 |
Acting on climate change | Strengthening our | Governance | ||
and biodiversity | exceptional culture |
Championing positive ageing continued
Product recognition
An age- and menopause-friendly employer
Our products have received industry recognition through a number of awards and accreditations during the year:
We are a Which? recommended provider for both ocean cruise and all-inclusive holidays
We took home an incredible 32 awards at the British Travel Awards, including Best Travel Company for Wildlife and Nature Holidays and Best Travel Company for Single Holidays
Our Insurance division is a
Defaqto 5* rated provider
Titan Travel was awarded
Best Premium Touring
Brand at the Travel Weekly
Globe Awards
Our working lives are getting longer, but many people over 50 still hear "When are you going to retire?". We want to change that mindset and show that age is no barrier to continued professional success. That is why we have taken the Age-friendly Employer Pledge with the Centre for Ageing Better and we take care with the wording we use in recruitment advertising, avoiding language that might introduce an age bias.
We were the first major UK firm to offer paid leave for new grandparents, giving our colleagues the opportunity to support their families. This is about helping new grandparents celebrate those special moments and play
a role in their growing families from day one. It is also a symbol of how important older workers are to us and to society at large.
You can read more about our approach to age at work here.
We are also moving forward the conversation on menopause, upskilling our leaders and role-modelling a more accepting and open culture. We worked closely with industry experts, Henpicked, to create the tools and resources to support our colleagues in the best way. We were delighted to continue to receive the Menopause Friendly Accreditation.
Colleagues aged over 50
25.1%
31 January 2023 - 22.1%
During the year, we launched the second part of our 'Basics of Ageing' training to all colleagues. This second module focused on understanding how we can reframe the conversation on age, exploring and debunking myths around ageing, and investigating how our beliefs about ageing can create positive outcomes for older people. We aim to have trained at least 90% of our colleagues on the 'Basics of Ageing' by the end of 2024.
Our working lives are getting longer, but many people over 50 still hear "When are you going to retire?". We want to change that mindset."
Saga plc | 9 |
ESG Report 2024 |
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Saga plc published this content on 21 May 2024 and is solely responsible for the information contained therein. Distributed by Public, unedited and unaltered, on 21 May 2024 08:24:04 UTC.
