Thought leadership article
Insurance companies are now at the heart of the sustainable transition: exposed to worsening climate and social risks, subject to increasing transparency requirements, they play their role in terms of social and environmental responsibility and communicate on a variety of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) strategies.
Yet, the idea of “sustainable insurance products” is still largely conceptual: there is, to date, no operational framework to consistently assess the integration of ESG factors into non-life insurance products and services. This article presents a pragmatic framework to fill this gap and shows how ESG can become a concrete lever for prevention, inclusion and resilience.
A methodological gap
The insurance industry is currently evolving in a context marked by a simultaneous intensification of climate and social risks. The increase in the frequency and severity of extreme events increases the probability of risks that are now uninsurable, and weakens traditional pooling mechanisms.
On the social front, the widening of the protection gap, ie the gap between total economic losses and those actually covered by insurance, raises growing accessibility issues, particularly for households, small businesses or regions that are already vulnerable (EIOPA, 2021). As risks increase, some customer segments struggle to access affordable premiums, which raises questions not about solidarity in the mutualist sense of the term, but about the ability of various insurance models, both cooperative and listed, to maintain an inclusive level of coverage in a context of increasing risks…
This article was authored by Simon Perrin, Sustainability Manager, Vaudoise Assurances (Switzerland) and Jeanne Salamin, Sustainability and ESG Specialist, MSc Sustainable Management & Technology. This article is reproduced with the kind permission of ICMIF Member Vaudoise Assurances.
Published March 2026
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