Our Roadmap: One Year On

Our Climate Change Roadmap was first published in 2021, setting milestones that must be met by 2025 to keep our sector on track halving emissions by 2030 and reaching Net Zero by 2050.  

It focuses primarily on our sector’s role in supporting the delivery of the UK’s Net Zero strategy and meeting its carbon budgets, identifying areas where our diverse membership can collaborate to drive meaningful action.

Publishing the Roadmap was intended to be the starting point for raising the ambition of our own membership and our wider sector in addressing climate change. 

Our Roadmap was developed by a Board sub-group of CEOs in 2021, with the intention that it would help the wider sector benchmark themselves against best practice. We are pleased that other members have been able to use the Roadmap to develop their own strategies, including long-term savings provider Just and general insurance provider Ageas.

David Rorrison, Director of Enterprise Risk, Just Group plc said:

The ABI has done great job in helping the insurance industry focus on climate change and the associated risks and keep abreast of regulatory expectations in this space. This has included providing updates as consultations are published and coordinating the industry response. The ABI working groups have been useful in moulding and shaping our knowledge and understanding to build on our strategy, in turn supporting the development of our disclosures and our sustainability story.  Particularly helpful are the regular one-to-one catch-up calls for informal discussions. The ABI roadmap has played a key role over the past year demonstrating the industry’s commitment to play its part in seeking to mitigate the impacts of climate change. The roadmap helped us to align to science meaning that our published targets were seen as positive by external stakeholders.”

Adam Clarke, Chief Underwriting Officer and executive champion for ESG, Ageas said:

The ABI’s Climate Change Roadmap is something we wholeheartedly support and we’re proud that several of the recommendations within it are already well embedded in our operations here at Ageas. For example, our award-winning green parts programme is contributing to the circular economy through the reuse of parts, resulting in reduced demand for more plastic and metal parts to be produced. “Despite this we as a business and as an industry recognise that there is always more we can do. We’re therefore pleased that the ABI’s Climate Change Roadmap is an ever-evolving document, which seeks to push the agenda for further action on climate change.”

Our roadmap has played a key role over the past year demonstrating the industry’s commitment to play its part in seeking to mitigate the impacts of climate change. The roadmap helped us to align to science meaning that our published targets were seen as positive by external stakeholders.”

We published an updated version of our Climate Change Roadmap in 2022 to aligned to the wider public policy agenda and the latest climate science. We hope that this will remain the first port-of-call for those within our sector looking to take action on climate change.

We are committed to providing an annual update on our progress in driving forward the work outlined in the Roadmap.

We have provided updates on the progress made on each of our four pillars since the Roadmap was launched, and then identified the actions we want to see in the following twelve months.

We believe we have made meaningful progress in all four areas of our Roadmap. Some of the most important developments include:

• Significant progress setting transparent Net Zero targets and joining the Race To Zero
• • amongst the marketshare represented by ABI members, c89% of the Long-term Savings market and c54% of the General Insurance market is part of the UN-backed ‘Race To Zero’ campaign.
  • This progress has been acknowledged with the ABI being granted ‘Race To Zero accelerator’ status by the campaign.
  • Of those not yet part of Race To Zero, a survey of our members showed that 94% of respondents are currently considering becoming a ‘Race To Zero’ member
• Across the whole sector, good progress is being made setting targets and preparing Transition Plans:
• • 27 out of 34 respondents (79%) have already set a Net Zero target that has been approved by their Boards
  • 30 out of 34 respondents (88%) already developing their Net Zero Transition Plan, well in advance of this becoming mandatory.
• We developed a Good Practice Guidance on engaging with industry supply chains to reduce emissions linked with claims handling and servicing customers
• Further efforts to support resilience, building on industry initiatives such as Flood Re’s Build Back Better scheme

Even in the context of growing pressures on energy security and living costs, the risks of failing to tackle climate change are so severe that we have to stay focussed on delivering on the four pillars of our Roadmap.