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Environment & Climate Change
Corporate citizenship
- Recognizing and responding to the reality of climate change across our businesses
- Managing environmental risk for our customers with innovative products and risk engineering solutions
- Supporting environmental resiliency projects throughout the world
- Protecting biodiversity and saving land through our philanthropy
- Reducing the environmental footprint of our own operations
Chubb and climate change
Chubb is an underwriting company, and the company strives to emphasize quality of underwriting rather than volume of business or market share. The company’s underwriting strategy is to manage risk by employing consistent, disciplined pricing and risk selection. Underwriting discipline is at the heart of our operating philosophy. Chubb applies the same risk management rigor to its broadly diversified fixed income portfolio as it does to the company’s underwriting practice. In addition, Chubb accounts for the potential impact of catastrophe and climate risks on the company’s own facilities and operations. Direct risk to Chubb’s business operations exists to the extent that increasingly frequent or severe weather events associated with climate change occur where Chubb has offices.
At Chubb, assessing and managing risk starts at the top, with senior management. Risk management at Chubb is rigorous, with processes and governance to provide checks and balances. Chubb’s global enterprise risk management (ERM) framework — which encompasses climate risk — is embraced by colleagues at all levels of the company, from the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Board of Directors, down to each business unit and function. It is broadly multi–disciplinary and one of its objectives is effective governance.
The potential impacts of climate change on the insurance industry are myriad and multivariate. These risks and opportunities fall broadly into three categories: physical risks and opportunities; transition risks and opportunities; and liability risks and opportunities
Metrics and Targets
Chubb measures and reports on climate risk in a number of different ways. A primary objective of Chubb’s environmental program is to measure, record and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the company’s own operations.
At the end of 2019, Chubb achieved the first of its two GHG emissions reduction goals. We reduced our GHG emissions by 22% off a 2016 baseline, exceeding our goal of reducing emissions 20% by 2025. As of year-end 2021, Chubb also reached the second of its two goals by reducing our Scope 1 and Scope 2 GHG emissions by 49% off a 2016 baseline. We accomplished this goal through a combination of real estate portfolio optimization, energy efficiency projects and renewable electricity purchase.
2024 GHG Emissions
Chubb’s annual GHG inventory covers our Scope 1, Scope 2, and certain Scope 3 (business travel) emissions. Chubb remains committed to identifying ways to create emissions reductions in the real economy and we continue to assess the appropriateness of setting further Scope 1 and 2 targets. Chubb seeks to avoid the
purchase of carbon offsets and to instead prioritize investments in operational efficiency and the purchase of renewable energy in every country where is it available for purchase and reasonably priced. The GHG emissions data reported below covers fiscal year 2024. Chubb uses methodology based on the World Resources Institute and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WRI/WBCSD) GHG Protocol for data collection and analysis.
Environmental solutions
Chubb is committed to developing insurance products and risk management services that facilitate market–based solutions to current and pending environmental and climate-related issues. Today, Chubb is one of the largest and most advanced global underwriters of environmental liabilities and pollution risk, with environmental risk units in North America, Europe, Asia and Latin America.
Our advanced environmental insurance solutions include:
- Coverages for premises-based exposures
- Contractors’ and project pollution liability
- Renewable energy
- Clean tech and environmental cleanup projects
- Green building consulting services
- Property policies for greener rebuilding after a loss
Chubb’s role in mitigating supply chain and global operations risks through its risk engineering services helps organizations identify climate-related exposures and provides risk management expertise to help manage environmental challenges caused by climate change.
LEED projects
Chubb has implemented green building practices in many of our buildings. In a number of locations, we have pursued the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED® (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) certification. Green building practices help improve indoor air quality, address resource management and reduce building water and energy use.
Both of our largest office building locations in the U.S., Philadelphia and Whitehouse Station, N.J., are LEED–certified Platinum and Gold, respectively. Our building in Bermuda is LEED–certified Platinum. Many of our leased properties around the world are also LEED–certified, including among others Paris (Platinum), Chicago (Gold), Quito (Silver) and New York (Silver). In total, 25 Chubb offices are in LEED–certified buildings.
Corporate Environmental Program goals
The Corporate Environmental Program has additional operational goals, including establishing a recycling program in each office and working toward 100% adoption, globally discontinuing use of disposable plastic water bottles, removing all disposable Styrofoam products, purchasing only sustainable copy paper, and reducing paper consumption year over year. A number of Chubb’s offices, including some of our largest locations, have met these goals. Others are making progress on the journey to achieve them.
Environmental philanthropy
The environment is a priority in Chubb’s corporate philanthropy. Chubb supports communities around the world in which we live and work through established philanthropic entities and company-sponsored volunteer initiatives.
Grants from Chubb’s charitable foundations have helped preserve sensitive lands and habitats across the world, finance “green” business entrepreneurs, and support educational programs that promote a healthy and sustainable environment.
Corporate Climate Underwriting Criteria
Through Chubb’s underwriting process, we have opportunities to promote good risk management and the adoption of sound engineering practices by our clients. Our climate strategy seeks to deploy Chubb’s fundamental areas of expertise to address the high-emitting industries we insure. Our approach to these industries involves conducting our own review of best practices, seeking guidance from non-governmental organization (NGO) partners, and engaging with our clients to develop perspectives on GHG emissions mitigation measures that apply best engineering practices and relate to risk quality. As we develop underwriting criteria, we will simultaneously offer our on-the-ground engineering expertise, working on-site with our clients to help deploy best practices and controls to reduce GHG emissions.
We applied this approach to the development of our underwriting criteria for oil and gas, steel, and cement, and we are currently evaluating the potential evidence to support the development of criteria in other high-emitting industries. We anticipate announcing criteria for additional high-emitting industries over the course of 2025.
Engaging our employees
Chubb has long engaged its employees in environmental efforts. Various offices have had employee-led “green teams” for decades. However, in the interest of coordinating globally and connecting employees across the company, on Earth Day 2019 we founded the Chubb Environmental Network (CEN).
The CEN is comprised of volunteer employees in offices around the world and acts as a resource that globally connects employees passionate about environmental sustainability. CEN’s goals are to support Chubb’s environmental goals, set office-specific sustainability goals, and be thought leaders in Chubb’s role in responding to environmental challenges.