Zurich debuts climate offering for commercial clients

Zurich Resilience Solutions (ZRS), the commercial risk advisory and services unit of Zurich Insurance Group, has partnered with climate services provider and carbon project developer South Pole to launch a new climate change-related offering to companies.

According to Zurich, the joint offering will be initially available in the US, Germany and Switzerland. It will help businesses tackle both sides of the climate challenge at the same time, by helping them to define and execute their short- and long-term climate resilience objectives, as well as their net-zero goals. It will focus on measuring physical climate risk and emissions, helping establish a strategy to reduce each, and overseeing implementation of actions that will meet local regulatory and sustainability reporting requirements.

“Defining and deploying effective climate adaptation and mitigation strategies requires special knowhow and can be extremely complex and time-consuming, even more so for multinationals,” said Hanno Mijer, global head of Zurich Resilience Solutions. “Demand for climate resilience services has grown exponentially in recent years. Collaborating with South Pole will allow us to address climate-related risks holistically by supporting customers on their net-zero journey as well as resilience.”

Zurich said that companies must intensify their efforts to collectively reduce emissions to successfully transition to net zero and mitigate the environmental impacts. At the same time, companies have to prepare and adapt to the consequences of global warming and consider the current and future impacts of climate change on their business. According to the Climate Disclosure Project, the financial benefits of climate action are at least 15 times higher than the cost of risks.

Companies are also increasingly understanding that taking climate action is not only critical to managing their operational risks, but more stakeholders are expecting companies to transparently demonstrate how they are actively reducing their environmental impact and building resilience along their value chain, and, more importantly, to regularly report on the effectiveness of these measures.

“Companies that fail to demonstrate their progress in building resilience and reducing emissions will likely pay the price both reputationally and financially,” said Renat Heuberger, CEO of South Pole. “But knowing where to start can be difficult. We are pleased to combine South Pole’s best-in-class climate advisory with Zurich Resilience Solutions’ expertise in resilience to steer corporate leaders toward effective mitigation and adaptation efforts – both for commercial success and for climate protection.”