Climate Change Education Best Practices and Industry Transition Pathway Analyses - How Zurich Insurance Can Improve its Advising Capabilities
The Zurich Insurance Group is a Swiss-based company that is dedicated to being among the most impactful and responsible businesses across the globe. As such, Zurich Insurance was the first insurance company to sign the UN Compact Business Ambition for 1.5 Pledge. That said, Switzerland’s largest insurance company has encountered problems across its employees in their knowledge of and comfort with sustainability and climate change. Zurich Insurance has recognized that to better influence and serve its clients in their transition towards a 1.5C future, its underwriting team needs to be able to understand how sustainability impacts their work. Currently, the firm does not have the ability to advise clients on industry specific transition pathways towards a 1.5C future and is looking to develop a product or service to meet this need. To assist Zurich Insurance in identifying and developing these capabilities, the UM SEAS team conducted primary and secondary research in the project’s three main phases. The first phase of the project involved developing easily interpretable overviews of the transition pathways across ten industries of interest for underwriters to reference. The second phase explored the current state of Zurich Insurance’s underwriting team’s climate change and sustainability awareness. To do this, the UM SEAS team conducted internal interviews with members of the underwriting team and collecting results of an internal survey. After establishing the baseline of Zurich Insurance employees’ knowledge and comfort with sustainability, the team set forth on the final phase of the project, which involved researching and benchmarking best education practices for climate change across academia and companies. Insights gleaned from interviews with academic experts and sustainability professionals guided the team’s recommendations for Zurich Insurance on how to approach engaging and empowering employees in becoming sustainability champions.
Andi Bustamante, Dave Duckett, Jeremiah Eaton, Mackenzie Dallas, Lenny Su