Swiss Re Modern Slavery Act Transparency Statement
This statement is made on behalf of the Swiss Re group of companies (the Swiss Re Group) pursuant to section 54(1) of the UK Modern Slavery Act 2015 and constitutes the Swiss Re Group’s slavery and human trafficking statement for the financial year ending 31 December 2018. This statement sets out the steps that the Swiss Re Group has taken and is taking to ensure that slavery and human trafficking are not taking place in any of its supply chains or in any part of its own business.
The Swiss Re Group
The Swiss Re Group is a leading wholesale provider of reinsurance, insurance and other insurance-based forms of risk transfer. Dealing directly and working through brokers, our global client base consists of insurance companies, mid-to-large-sized corporations, public sector clients, and retail customers. Our operating segments comprise Reinsurance, offering traditional reinsurance solutions, insurance-linked securities and other insurance-related capital market products in both the Property & Casualty and Life & Health sectors; Corporate Solutions, providing insurance capacity to mid-sized and large multinational corporations; and Life Capital, our primary life and health business, which includes iptiQ, elipsLife, and the ReAssure business in the UK. Headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, Swiss Re has operations at over 80 office locations in more than 30 countries. For more information about the Swiss Re Group, and for a list of Swiss Re’s significant subsidiaries and businesses, please see our 2018 Annual Financial Report.
Our commitment to corporate responsibility
Swiss Re has a long-standing commitment to corporate responsibility. Swiss Re complies with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (known as the Ruggie Framework) and is a signatory to the UN Global Compact. We are also signatories to the UN-supported Principles for Responsible Investment and to the United Nations Principles for Sustainable Insurance. This web of ethical principles informs our Group Code of Conduct, which guides Swiss Re employees in making responsible decisions and achieving results using the highest ethical standards. We also recognise that espousal of human rights, labour standards and environmental protection is crucial for responsible business and sustainable development, and so of long-term benefit to the re/insurance industry. Our Sustainability Risk Framework seeks to embed the twin principles of respect for human rights and protection of the environment into all elements of our business. To learn more about our commitment to corporate responsibility and the actions we have taken to put this commitment into practice, please see our 2018 Corporate Responsibility Report and the Corporate Responsibility section of our website.
Our policies in practice
Our employees
Our Code of Conduct requires Swiss Re to promote a diverse and
inclusive environment where everyone is treated with respect, free from
discrimination and harassment. We are committed to fair and equal
treatment, and provide equal opportunity for all individuals, regardless
of age, race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, religion, sexual
orientation, disability or any other class protected by law.
Recruitment of all employees by Swiss Re is conducted in accordance with
our Global Standard on Recruitment. This requires all applicants to
undergo formal pre-screening for review of their eligibility, work
permits and completeness of documents. All Swiss Re employees are
employed by mutual agreement through a written contract governed by
local law and terminable by either party.
All employees and candidates have access to an externally-hosted
Whistleblowing Hotline to report suspicions of misconduct openly and
anonymously. The Hotline is accessible by phone or via a website, both
of which are operated by an independent service provider. All reports
are treated in confidence, and Swiss Re maintains a zero-tolerance
policy regarding retaliation against any individual reporting in good
faith.
Our supply chain and procurement processes
To run our operations we procure a wide range of goods and services,
and we recognise and mitigate the supply chain risk that exists where
our suppliers do not apply national or international legal and
regulatory standards, or do not follow the principles set out in the UN
Global Compact. The principles of the UN Global Compact are incorporated
into our Code of Conduct by reference, and specifically cover our
relationships with external service providers under the headings of
human rights, labour conditions, environmental impact and
anticorruption. The procurement of all goods and services from external
vendors is conducted in accordance with our Group Sourcing Standard,
which also incorporates these headings from the UN Global Compact. When
selecting goods and services, we examine whether they comply with these
requirements as part of the overall evaluation process. We review
existing strategic suppliers in periodic contract reviews, and we visit
individual suppliers to inspect them onsite. Internally, we hold regular
awareness training on the principles of our Code of Conduct with all
our sourcing staff.
We have commenced the internal rollout of a collaborative platform for
sustainable supply chain management, which assesses and screens
suppliers and supply networks against corporate social responsibility
criteria. The methodology explicitly incorporates human rights
compliance due diligence, including child and forced labour. Our 2018 Corporate Responsibility Report
articulates our commitment to ensuring that we have better transparency
of our strategic supplier relationships, which will be rated and will
enable us to continue our efforts to improve our Environment Social and
Governance (ESG) impact by 2020.
Our clients and business transactions
Our Sustainability Risk Framework specifies criteria that may lead us to exclude a company from our re/insurance transactions or investments. These criteria include human rights violations, forced labour and slavery. All relevant employees have access to a Sensitive Business Risk Assessment Tool which analyses business transactions in respect of the Sustainability Risk Framework criteria. The tool cross-references the supplied information against internal risk registers and external data sources to calculate a sensitivity rating, and to supply a recommendation to either abstain from the transaction, refer the transaction for further analysis or mitigation, or proceed. Swiss Re also excludes certain countries from its business that have particularly poor human rights records. We review and update this list annually based on independent human rights assessments.
Our investments and acquisitions
Swiss Re invests its assets responsibly via a controlled and
structured investment process, integrating ESG criteria across the
entire portfolio. As part of that, we consider higher ESG rated
companies for our listed equity and corporate bond investments.
Furthermore, we apply the principles of the Sustainability Risk
Framework to all our investments, which may lead to the exclusion of a
company or a country from Swiss Re’s investment scope.
All of our investments by acquisition include due diligence conducted in
accordance with our Code of Conduct, including pre-transaction
screening, integrity checks by external advisers and legal due diligence
in order to identify and assess ESG, legal and regulatory risks. At
more advanced stages of the due diligence process, our investment teams
work with Group Risk Management and Compliance functions to perform
sensitive business risk, political risk and compliance assessments.
Our action against money laundering and financial crime
An aspect specifically relevant to financial service providers in the context of human trafficking is the link to money laundering, which is often associated with organised crimes that generate profits in cash such as people trafficking. Swiss Re has developed a Global Anti-Money Laundering Programme to ensure compliance with Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing (AML) laws. The Programme includes risk-based counterparty due diligence and screening (for both sourcing and re/insurance counterparties), risk-based transaction monitoring, screening against AML watchlists, mandatory AML training for all employees, designated group and regional money laundering reporting officers, a requirement for all employees to report illegal, suspicious or unusual activity to their money laundering reporting officer, reporting of AML and terrorist financing suspicions to relevant authorities, internal and independent reviews and audits to test the design and effectiveness of our AML framework, and a whistleblowing hotline for anonymous reporting. Swiss Re also adheres to the Recommendations of the Financial Action Taskforce, the leading international organization in the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing.
Approval
The Board of Directors of Swiss Re Ltd approved this statement at its meeting of 13 March 2019.
2018 Swiss Re Modern Slavery Act Transparency Statement (signed)