SOMPO Climate Action

With the adoption of the SDGs conclusion of the Paris Agreement in 2015, companies are increasingly expected to take concrete action to combat climate change. With this in mind, we have positioned “SDGs in business management” as part of our management foundation. We will also accelerate “SOMPO Climate Action” , which calls for us to “adapt to climate change,” “mitigate climate change,” and　“contribute to societal transformation.”

Since the 1990s, the Group has been tackling global environmental issues in collaboration with a wide range of stakeholders. Through partnerships with stakeholders built up over many years, we will promote initiatives that emphasize environmental, economic, and social sustainability. Our aim is to realize a resilient, carbon-neutral society where people and nature are in harmony.

In 1992, SOMPO’s president at the time participated in the Rio Summit as the chairman of the Keidanren Committee on Nature Conservation. In the same year, we established the Department of Global Environment—the first for a Japanese financial institution—and have since been working on global environmental issues in collaboration with NPOs and other organizations. In 1997, we obtained ISO 14001 certification for environmental management systems (another first for a Japanese financial institution), and been working to “adapt to” and “mitigate” climate change.

We are also contributing to “societal transformation” by participating in sustainability promotion and rule-making organizations. Recently, we have been working hard to promote climate-related information disclosure in the insurance industry, including by developing methods for analyzing climate risks. For example, we joined the insurance pilot working group of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), promoted by the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative. We are also committed to the Science Based Targets (SBT) initiative, which aims to achieve the 1.5°C target of the Paris Agreement, and in September 2018 we were the only domestic insurance group that participated in the Expert Advisory Group for the development of SBT guidelines for financial institutions. In December 2020, meanwhile, we joined the Business for Nature Strategic Advisory Group, which consolidates the opinions of industry and makes policy proposals to address the growing sense of crisis about biodiversity.

In 2021 we were the first member in Asia to participate in the Insurance-Associated Emissions Working Group of the Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials (PCAF) to formulate international standards for measuring and disclosing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the underwriting of insurance and to work on making rules to help bring about a net-zero society. The PCAF is a global initiative for developing methods to measure GHG emissions associated with the loans and investments of financial institutions and in their insurance underwriting portfolios.

In 2022 we became the member of the sector-specific alliances^* under the umbrella of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), a global alliance of financial institutions that aim to achieve net-zero GHG emissions by the year 2050. In doing so, we will aim to contribute to the acceleration of net-zero initiatives by encouraging decarbonization in reducing GHG emissions in asset management.
We are also participating in the pilot project of the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), an international organization supported by the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) and tasked with building a framework for appropriately assessing and disclosing the risks and opportunities related to natural capital and biodiversity, and developing a beta version of the framework.