Munich Re

Munich Re demonstrates leading practices in areas such as governance, stewardship, lobbying and the ILO core labor rights. Not only does it assign decision-making and oversight responsibility for its sustainability strategy to its highest governance body, but it also assigns responsibility for implementing its sustainability strategy to specific functions, teams or committees. It also links performance criteria for remuneration at the senior executive level to specific sustainability targets.

Stewardship-wise, Munich Re has a stewardship policy that supports environmental transitions and social best practices in line with its sustainability strategy. and covers client and other stakeholder engagement as well as advocacy and partnerships. In relation to lobbying, it discloses a list of the trade associations of which it is a member, as well as the positions it takes in its lobbying and political engagement activities on sustainability topics. Furthermore, Munich Re discloses specific actions taken to align its lobbying and public policy engagement with its sustainability strategy. Additionally, it has a publicly available policy statement committing it to respect the ILO core labour rights and expects its suppliers to do the same.

Munich Re also has disclosures in other areas. For instance, it has a publicly available policy statement committing it to respect human rights. Moreover, it provides at least one example of how its products, services and capital supports the climate adaptation and resilience of society and monitors its Scope 1-2 emissions. Lastly, it discloses its operational details by country.

There is scope for Munich Re to enhance its disclosures in areas such as its impact materiality strategy targets and plans, financing activities and organizational carbon footprint. While Munich Re identifies material sustainability impacts across its value chain, it could further detail its process and how objective criteria and/or supportable evidence were considered for the identification and prioritization of impacts. It is recommended for Munich Re to disclose that it conducts third-party assurance or verification of its target reporting. In terms of financing of fossil fuels, it has an opportunity to extend its strategy to phase out support for existing fossil fuel projects lacking a 1.5°C-aligned strategy to all fossil fuels.

While Munich Re supports various initiatives that are nature-positive, it has an opportunity to disclose the aggregate amount and/or share (in monetary terms) of its provision of products, services and capital devoted to specified nature-positive solutions. It is also recommended for Munich Re to disclose the breakdown of clients and/or beneficiaries by income group. and its processes for avoiding divestment from low-income and lower-middle countries as unintended consequences of its sustainability strategies and targets. In terms of organisational carbon footprint, Munich Re monitors scope 3 emissions beyond financed emissions but could consider covering additional categories and providing a rationale for those excluded. Furthermore, it could disclose that it has established a transition plan covering its own operations, supply chain and portfolio.

There is also an opportunity for Munich Re to disclose how it determines a living wage for the regions where it operates, as well as a publicly available policy statement that specifies that it does not make political contributions.

This scorecard refers to information in English which was publicly available by July 15 2024. AuM and Total assets are stated in USD for comparability and have been calculated based on reported local currency values multiplied by applicable IMF currency converter values.