Multinational Insurance Companies and Environmental Sustainability Issues

Insurers have to deal with environmental sustainability issues in a strategic manner, as such issues have impact on their core business, including insurance policies, claims, and investments. The aim of this paper is to review the academic literature to identify if, and how, multinational insurers deal with environmental sustainability issues and on what levels; institutional, organizational, and individual levels. Secondary data in the form of self-reporting information from three multinational insurance companies is reviewed according to the European Corporate Sustainability Framework for Managing Complexity and Corporate Transformation to examine insurers’ environmental sustainability priorities disclosed on their websites and in their reports. The framework components are based on so-called SqEME® Process Management, which is an open standard for developing process-centered architectures of enterprises expressed in four C’s Constitution, Chemistry, Construct (or Conduct), and Correspondence (or Control). The purpose is to learn if and how insurers deal with environmental issues in their daily business. This is done by addressing three questions; 1) What does the literature say about environmental actions of insurers? 2) What do multinational insurers say about their environmental actions? and 3) What are the multinational insurance companies doing to address environmental sustainability issues? The study reveals limited literature on the topic, different companies approach of dealing with environmental sustainability issues, actions in all four categories of the above mentioned framework, and actions at different levels