Corporate social responsibility
Corporate responsibility is a key ingredient of our strategy. It is about sustainable value creation, one of our core values, as set out in our code of conduct. We aim to create sustainable value for each of our main stakeholder groups by addressing relevant environmental, social and governance issues.
Around the world, Zurich commits one week a year to give back to our respective local communities. In 2015, staff and advisors took to the streets for a Charity Fun Run around the Central Business District. The run had more than 100 participants and covered a distance of 4km. In support of our chosen charity, Singapore Cancer Society (SCS), we raised a total of SGD16,300 from staff donations, doubling our previous year’s amount. Proceeds raised were matched dollar-by-dollar by Z Zurich Foundation, bringing our total donation for the year to SGD32,600.
Zurich Singapore is proud to support the Singapore Cancer Society as our chosen charity organization and lend our support through our Global Community Week initiatives.
In 2015, Zurich Singapore was the charity sponsor for Sing50 – the mega concert celebrating Singapore’s 50th birthday. As charity sponsor for the event, Zurich donated S for every audience member present at the concert, with the proceeds going towards two children charities - The Straits Times School Pocket Money Fund (ST SPMF) and The Business Times Budding Artists Fund (BT BAF).
"Sing50 provides us with an opportunity to reach out to the community and to communicate Zurich’s brand values in a symbolic and emotional way." - Jonathan Rake, CEO of Zurich's General Insurance business in Singapore.
Complementing our participation with Sing50, we created The Zurich Blue Piano Experience, with the Zurich Piano making its stage debut at the Singapore Botanic Gardens, for a concert featuring famed Swiss pianist, Nico Brina - “King of Boogie”. Amongst the 3,000 attendees at the concert, 300 were specially invited Singapore Cancer Society beneficiaries and their families. Following the concert, we brought the Zurich Piano to the streets of Singapore on an island wide tour where people passing by could perform for a public audience.
Leading up to the Zurich Blue Piano Experience, Singapore Cancer Society volunteers came together to craft a one-of-a-kind knitted blue piano cover for our Zurich piano. After 3 weeks and more than 600 hours of knitting we revealed the bespoke piano cover at the Botanic Gardens concert - beautifully hand-crafted and inspired by Zurich's theme of protection.
The Zurich Forest is a project in collaboration with Instituto Terra, a non-profit organization founded in 1998 by Lélia and Sebastião Salgado in Brazil.
Reforestation can be a powerful tool in addressing climate change, provided it doesn’t create monocultures. It needs to be done in a targeted, responsible way to ensure it builds biodiversity, supporting a variety of wildlife and local communities. Zurich has specifically chosen a collaboration with Instituto Terra to help rebuild a key area of biodiversity and raise awareness of the plight of what’s known as ‘the other Brazilian rainforest’.
Instituto Terra aims to re-create native forests, restore the biodiversity of plants and animals, protect soil, and to revive and maintain water sources on the former cattle farm “Bulcão” in the Doce river valley in Brazil. This area was originally covered by the Atlantic Forest, a biodiversity hotspot. Due to deforestation and other human activities only 7% of the original forest is left intact.
Zurich’s grant covers the planting of one million seedlings of up to 120 scientifically selected native species, supporting the growth of healthy native forest.
Zurich has offered its 55,000 global employees to put their name against the trees in the Forest. Zurich was also one of the sponsors of the 2021 Bloomberg Green Virtual Summit and donated 20,000 trees to the Forest as part of our sponsorship of the Summit.
In March 2021, over 200 cyclists from seven countries across Asia participated in an informal industry challenge dubbed Le Tour de ICB (Insurance Circuit Breaker) 2021 for charity – the Atlas Foundation and the Anita, Alex & Annabel Nicholson Memorial Fund.
14 staff from Zurich Singapore and Zurich Japan put their best foot forward and cycled close to 11,000 kilometers, raising a total of SGD 8,246.35, including contributions from the Z Zurich Foundation, who pledged SGD 5 per 10 km cycled by the team.
