Ready to label insurances
Advanced impact on company behaviour
The first insurances have now been approved for ecolabelling. It is Folksam's car and home insurances that are Good Environmental Choice due to high standards in capital management, repair methods and chemical choice, and environmental advice to customers. There is great environmental potential in choosing an ecolabelled incurance.
There are four areas in focus for the ecolabelling criteria:
Company behaviour:
Energy efficiency, consumption of paper, electricity etc.; the company itself need to live up to a certain level.
Claims handling:
Repairs, substitute of products, use of chemical products, re-use etc.
Capital management of insurance premiums:
System for managing with environmental and ethical principles, positive selection (companies with better environmental and ethical profile are selected), negative selection (where industries and companies with bad profiles are disqualified) and follow-up.
Advice on energy efficiency and ecodriving:
An active relationship to the customer to stimulate more proactive environmental life style of the policy holders.
In april, 2011, the criteria was presented and now Folksam's products has been approved. More companies are interested and in the process of assessing the criteria.
During 2010, a feasibility study was performed to work out the conditions for labelling insurances. It was an open process where the stakeholders in the industry were invited throughout the process. The report of the study was referred for consideration. An evaluation of the study and the result of the referral enthused the the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation (SSNC) to develop criteria for labelling car and home insurances. The feasibility study was financed by Folksam.
Insurances are something that concerns most consumers. We have insurances for our homes, bikes, houses, cars and so on. The insurance companies in Sweden have a yearly turnover of more than 6 billion Euros (nearly 60 billion SEK), and claims handling brings huge amounts of money into the garage and building trades. The insurance premiums paid by all customers are kept in shares, bonds and real estate.
Thus, in 2010 SSNC performed a feasibility study to work out the prerequisites for launching ecolabelling of insurances. Based on the results from the study and a referral, SSNC decided to go ahead. In april 2011 the first criteria were launched and it is possible for insurance companies to label their services with Good Environmental Choice!