Uniqa Insurance : Sustainability Report UNIQA Group 2020

2020 SUSTAINABILITY REPORT UNIQA GROUP

SEEDING THE FUTURE

• ENTHUSIASTIC: AMBITIOUS SUSTAINABILITY STRATEGY AGREED | 6
• STRONG: INVESTMENT POLICY AS A HIGH-IMPACT LEVER AGAINST THE CLIMATE CRISIS | 8
• GENUINE: AN INTERVIEW WITH UNIQA'S FIRST-EVER DIVERSITY OFFICER | 42

CONTENTS

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12

GREEN

SUCCESS

UNIQA wins another bronze sustainability certificate from the Austrian Society for Environment and Technology (ÖGUT).

UNIQA 3.0 - SEEDING THE FUTURE

1. AWAKENING: STRATEGIC MANIFESTO AGREED

1. STRATEGY: FIVE KEY PILLARS OF SUSTAINABILITY

1. INVESTMENT POLICY

07 AMBITION: TARGETING CLIMATE NEUTRALITY

1. INTERVIEW: INVESTMENT AS THE BIGGEST LEVER IN CLIMATE PROTECTION

1. SUCCESSES: AWARDS AND THE GREEN BOND
2. RULES OF THE GAME: THE SUSTAINABLE FINANCE ACTION PLAN

2. PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

16 FOCUS: SUSTAINABILITY AS STANDARD

18 EXIT: SYSTEMATIC DECARBONISATION

20 TRENDS: ESG FEATURES IN THE ASCENDANCY

22 HOLISTIC: START-UPS PROMOTING GREATER WELL-BEING

1. DIGITAL: PULLING THROUGH THE CRISIS THANKS TO SERVICES

1. INTERNATIONAL: GREEN AND HEALTHCARE INITIATIVES

3. COMPANY MANAGEMENT

1. DIVERSITY: A WIDE RANGE OF CLIMATE-FRIENDLY APPROACHES

1. FLEET: SUSTAINABILITY IN THE FAST LANE

1. ENERGY MONITORING: CLEARLY IMPROVED EFFICIENCY

4. REPORTING

34 THE FIRST COMMANDMENT: TRANSPARENCY

36 RESPONSIBILITIES: A PIONEER FOR REPORTS AND RATINGS

1. MEMBERSHIPS AND PARTNERSHIPS

1. COOPERATION: JOINING FORCES

1. PLANS: AN INTERVIEW WITH OUR FIRST-EVER DIVERSITY OFFICER

1. TRAVEL: STEPS TOWARDS A FUTURE OF EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES

1. DIALOGUE: AWARD FOR EMPLOYEE FOCUS

1. INSPIRING: COACHING FOR MENTORS AND MANAGERS

22

FOR A GOOD CAUSE

CHERRISK lets people support charitable projects by living healthily.

36

PIONEERING

Its commitment to transparent and comprehensive reporting makes UNIQA a pioneer.

©UNIQA/Keinrath	EDITORIAL

Dear Readers,

The year 2020 demanded a great deal from all of us. Every area of a healthy, open and future-oriented society was confronted with major challenges. Some of these, such as the Covid-19 crisis or the Vienna terror attack, could hardly have been predicted. Others, such as our increasingly ageing society, rising old-age poverty due to pension short- falls, and accelerated digitalisation, have been shaping our company's understanding of the future for many years now. However, no challenge will be more important to UNIQA over the long term than the fight against the climate crisis - and thus the struggle to preserve the environment in which we live.

As a relevant insurer in Europe, we are conscious of our responsibility: it was therefore out of a deep sense of conviction that we signed up to the Paris climate targets and are striving to make UNIQA climate- neutral by 2040. We entered into key strategic partnerships with leading climate networks and assumed comprehensive reporting obligations in 2020. Sustainability has now become a non-negotiable criterion in our core business. We will be continuing along this path in future with our new corporate strategy - UNIQA 3.0 - and the sustainability strategy that forms an integral part of it.

Today, we are not at the end but at the beginning of a long journey. Only by working together with our staff, customers and other stakeholders will we be able to make an effective contribution to a better life and a better world. This Sustainability Report documents some successful measures and thus important milestones along our journey.

I hope you find it an interesting read.

Best regards,

Andreas Brandstetter

CEO UNIQA Group

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Strategic manifesto:

AWAKENING TO A SUSTAINABLE

FUTURE

Our UNIQA 2.0 strategy programme (2011-2020) made us a different company - a much better one. We have kept our promises and are now a relevant insurer in Europe.

Bold progress

We have been bold and resolute in developing processes and systems further. When we went public in 2013, we gave ourselves an excellent capital base and improved our earnings capacity sig- nificantly. By focusing clearly on decar- bonisation, we committed ourselves to a holistic investment strategy in late 2018. This strategy was launched in 2019, and its long-term targets were fine-tuned a year later. Today we are strong, independent and free.

Inspiring coaches

People have been taking out UNIQA insurance since 1811, and our mission has not changed since then: risks that cannot be borne by the individual alone are shared across the shoulders of our Group.

UNIQA is the organiser and facilitator of this risk pool. Looking after 15 million people in 18 countries, we see it as our mission to improve the lives of our customers and their families as inspiring coaches with innovative products and services relevant to their everyday lives, while at the same time using our combined strength to support the sustainable, responsible development of our society and environment.

Response to future challenges

Our forward-looking project UNIQA 3.0 is the response to the challenges and the wind in our sails that will enable us to emerge into a sustainable future. Our sustainability strategy, like our corporate goals, forms an integral part of our "stra- tegic manifesto". We are conscious of our responsibility towards people and nature

and want to embrace it by playing an
active role.	n

©Adobe Stock/ohenze

UNIQA 3.0:

DIVERSITY AS

A STRATEGY

We can already feel the impact of climate change. Extremely hot summers are causing crop failures and water shortages and are posing a health risk

to elderly people in particular. The winter tourism industry, which is so important to the Austrian economy, is facing huge challenges. Increasingly frequent storms, bringing landslides and flooding, are endangering people's lives and property and incurring ever higher costs for the whole of society. Some regions are suffering even more severely from the impact of climate change. Every year, therefore, more people will be forced to leave their homeland - with far-reaching financial and social consequences for their destination countries.

Sowing now what we want to reap in future

We still have time to do something about it. Let us seize the opportunity and sow now what we want to reap in future. Investing in green technologies and in staff who embody sustainable action will go a long way towards combating the climate crisis - and thus to ensuring a better life for our customers.

UNIQA 3.0 gives us the guiding framework that we need in order to respond flexibly to challenges and act more sustainably throughout the whole company. We have launched a wide range of initiatives so that we can achieve the objectives set out in the strategic programme. We will be embedding diversity and sustainability at the heart of UNIQA. Like nature, we want to draw our strength from diversity. Enjoying long-term success while preserving resources instead of literally leaving only scorched earth in our wake: this has always been our aim. We want to lead by example and show the world how to behave.

Living sustainably and injecting sustainability with life

We have been improving the lives and health of our customers and protecting
their livelihoods for 200 years. By investing our capital in sustainable ventures,
as we are doing now, we are putting all our strength into creating a better,
sustainable future - a future that is in harmony with our fellow human beings
and the environment in which we live.	n

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©Adobe Stock/Pavel

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SEEDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE

UNIQA's sustainability strategy is based on five key pillars.

1. INVESTMENT POLICY

Investment policy:

TARGETING

If anything, 2020 has shown us that the transformation in our society is shaped by expected developments just as much as unexpected ones. The Covid-19 crisis has taught us how quickly circumstances can change and how flexibly we need to

respond to major challenges.

were easier to cope with. Our prudent economic principles for action also enabled us to successfully mitigate the effects of continued low interest rates.

As we had more or less completed the

CLIMATE NEUTRALITYStock/Goffkein

©Adobe

Our efforts over the past few years to embed sustainability more closely into our structures and decision-making processes have had a far-reaching positive impact on our company. Our guidelines for responsible investments have helped us focus more strongly on sustainability factors

in our investing activities. It has become clear that sustainable investments experienced lower fluctuations in value that

overhaul of the social aspects of our working conditions, such as working from home and the requisite technical equipment as long ago as 2019, we have largely been able to continue operating during the coronavirus crisis. Our internal cohesion and the reliability of our services have remained highly robust at all times. One key element of our new UNIQA 3.0 corporate strategy is a comprehensive sustainability strategy aligned with ESG

criteria.* We want to use it to integrate sustainability ever more closely into our core business and thus make an important contribution to tackling the climate crisis.

Our strategy is built on the following five key pillars:

1.	An investment policy that aims for
	climate neutrality.
2.	A product policy aligned with
	ESG criteria.

In future, our investment approach will focus more closely on environmental and social factors impacting our assets from outside (e.g. natural catastrophes, environmental pollution, tighter regulations for certain industries). We will also be recording with great precision the

environmental footprint and social impact of the countries and companies in which we are invested. Thus we are building new databases so that we can factor the latest estimates into our investment decisions on an ongoing basis. In so doing, we are pre-empting forthcoming stricter legislation and new requirements in some cases.

science. By the end of the century, global warming is to be limited to below two degrees at least, preferably below 1.5 de- grees, compared with the level at the start of the Industrial Revolution in the early 19th century.

Europe's interim target of becoming climate-neutral by 2050 is an important yardstick. In this context, we will be recording the data underlying our climate strategy in much greater detail and, by 2025, will draw up a UNIQA climate pathway that fits the Paris targets.

networks is essential in order to develop new areas of expertise, spot where intervention is required sooner and act promptly. Our joining of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Finance Initiative and our collaboration with all signatories of the Principles for Responsible Investment are helping us to apply the right methods and, through our joint efforts, to provide efficient support to the real economy as it transforms into one that conserves more resources. As an insurer with over €25 billion in assets under management, we had a duty to forge

resolutely ahead down this path, which

*The term ESG has entered common usage all over the world and describes

3. A company management approach

we are now doing.

n

the three areas of a company's responsibility with regard to sustainability:

E stands for the environment (the climate, environmental pollution, biodiversity, etc.).

S refers to social impacts (human rights, occupational health and safety, diversity, etc.).

G means the rules, values and steering processes that make up sustainable (corporate) governance.

	that considers and supports our
	environmental and social objectives.
4.	Transparent reporting: "counting,
	measuring, weighing" the benefit
	created, and a willingness to be rated.
5.	Memberships and partnerships:
	pursuing social objectives together
	and engaging in constant dialogue via

stakeholder management.

n

Supporting the EU's climate targets

In order to provide consistent support in particular to the climate targets set by the EU and the Austrian federal government, we will be logging the indirect CO2 emissions generated by our invested assets and will be steadily reducing these in accordance with a system of targets backed by

Partnerships boosting efficiency

We have joined networks of like-minded companies and associations in order to support these major long-term ambitions. These memberships enable us to devise and implement potential solutions constructively and in the best possible spirit of partnership. Constant dialogue in the

©Adobe Stock/Dmitry Naumov

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1. Investment policy

"WHEN IT COMES TO

PROTECTING THE CLIMATE, INVESTMENTS ARE THE BIGGEST LEVER AN INSURER CAN HAVE."

With an investment policy aligned with ESG criteria, i.e. taking account

of environmental, social and corporate governance aspects, UNIQA is making a key contribution to

sustainability and protecting the climate.

Peter Eichler, the Management Board member responsible for personal insurance and asset investment, and Andreas Bertl, Managing Director of UNIQA Capital Markets, discuss the relevant details

and what measures are in the pipeline.

1. INVESTMENT POLICY

Investments are a key part of UNIQA's	We are wholeheartedly committed to the
sustainability strategy - why is that?	idea of protecting the planet against any
	further destruction. Without question, this
Peter Eichler: When we fine-tuned our	requires companies like us to take respon-
sustainability strategy last year, we came	sibility. Investments are the biggest lever
up with a five-point investment policy.	that we as an insurer can pull. Of course,
We will be integrating the Paris climate	this also includes making our buildings
targets into our investing activities by	green and saving paper, but it is only with
2025. Also by that date, we will be	our investments that we can really act
accumulating at least a billion-	efficiently. Everything revolves around this.
euros worth of sustainable invest-
ments as per the EU taxonomy,	Andreas Bertl: How easily can you tell
and we want the whole Group to	these days whether or not an investment
be climate-neutral by 2040. We	is sustainable? You can rarely give a clear
are assembling the core areas	"yes" or "no" answer to this question.
of specialist expertise and	Just consider how countries are assessed,
making UNIQA's responsi-	for instance - depending on the cover-
ble investment policy an	age fund, government bonds make up
integral part of what we	around half of our investments - and
do. Our strong and clear	you can imagine how tricky this task is.
statement of the Group's	Companies are definitely a bit easier to
focus on sustainability will	evaluate. In other words, we will be able
underpin every investment	to switch some parts of our portfolio over
step we take from now on.	faster than others. By this I mean that, in
	the broader view, we are in the middle
Andreas Bertl: Put simply,	of a gradual process of moving towards
an insurer's	the sustainable portfolio we envision. For
assets are made	this reason, exerting an influence on the
up almost	companies themselves has also become
exclusively of	such an important factor as it makes them
investments,	embrace this systematic shift to a way
giving them a size-	of doing business that preserves more
able volume. Assets	resources. In our capacity as an investor,
can also be adapted	we can give companies a great deal of
more quickly than	support in this area and thus also pursue
liabilities, which leads	the Paris climate targets in our portfolio
to results on the sus-	approach.
tainability front that
soon become visible.
So our investment pol-	How much progress has UNIQA made
icy is a key part of our	exactly on its sustainable investment
sustainability strategy.	policy?
As a relatively large inves-
tor, not only are we able	Peter Eichler: About two years ago, we
to do our bit - it is our great	started working with an Austrian service
desire to do so too.	provider that assessed our portfolio. This
	analysis confirmed UNIQA's good starting	Studio
Peter Eichler: Naturally, the	position and even secured us a bronze
Stock/Proxima
question immediately arises	rating from ÖGUT, the Austrian Society for
of how fast we can restruc-	Environment and Technology. This award
ture our portfolio.	clearly demonstrates UNIQA's innate	©Adobe

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