Corporate Responsibility

Corporate Responsibility (CR) is about how we interact with our key stakeholders in a responsible manner. As a business our aim is to adopt an international approach to operating as a responsible business. This enables us to tackle issues on the same scale, climate change being the most obvious example. We recognise that CR needs to play a key role throughout all of our businesses. As a result, we have now introduced CR into goals and objectives for our regional CEOs.

Although action on climate change is of major importance it must not overshadow other aspects of corporate responsibility. RSA has four key objectives relating to RSA as a workplace, our environmental management, our regional community engagement programmes and product development.

Marketplace

In 2007, we continued to help our customers manage and reduce the risks they face. We also responded to the increasing consumer demand to provide innovative insurance solutions that also benefit society and the environment. This year, we have launched our UK commercial energy audit service which aids building energy efficiency compliance by driving down costs, energy and CO2 emissions. Through our Global Renewable Energy we are still one of the few global insurers with the technical capability to insure both off and on-shore wind farms. In Ireland, we are the industry leaders in the provision of Wind Energy Insurance having been heavily involved over the last 8 years with the country's largest developers and protecting their local and international projects.

We have continued our work with the NGO, Basix, to provide insurance for rural groups in India living below the poverty line. In the UK, Bridget McIntyre, our UK CEO, became the inaugural chair of the insurance working group of the Government's Financial Inclusion Taskforce, ensuring we share our expertise as a major provider of social housing insurance schemes.

In Ireland we were the 1st insurer to launch a hybrid car insurance, offering owners of hybrid vehicles reduced premiums. Click here for more details.

Workplace

Attracting, developing and retaining top talent is fundamental to the success of RSA. Our Technical Academy is going from strength to strength in developing the future talent in claims, underwriting and actuarial skills, but we have also been really focused on engagement:

  • Responses to the annual employee survey continued to improve, with employee satisfaction rising an additional 2% from 2006;
  • We continue to ensure over 90% of employees pay is linked to their performance, reflecting our focus on making people accountable for their actions and that we recognise and reward superior performance; and
  • In 2007 we launched 'World Cafe' – internal engagement events to gather ideas and share opinions, the outputs of these are having a real impact on shaping strategy.

Community

Our community engagement programme focuses on promoting common themes that are relevant to our business and include safety, social inclusion and the environment, while allowing the flexibility to focus on the issues that matter locally. In practice this means employees at all levels having the opportunity to be involved in community projects, making a real contribution to worthy causes but also learning new skills and promoting the Group. As a leading motor insurer, we are committed to improving road safety awareness right around the world. For example, in Chile we are raising road safety awareness with 27,000 children and have donated 180,000 reflective safety vests in Sweden as part of a safety awareness campaign. Our overall donations increased to £2.3 million for the Group, with a greater focus on volunteering through our national events in Canada and the UK.

Environment

We have made good progress on our environmental strategy and have in place a long term strategy to monitor and reduce our major impacts and promote energy efficiency. This year we have extended our reporting framework and although our carbon footprint increased by 2000 tonnes, this was as a result of Italy, Colombia and Johnson in Canada reporting for the first time. For 2008, we have set a challenging target for the entire group to reduce carbon emissions by 2.5% by year end. We continue to be a Carbon Neutral insurer in the UK only using offsets as a last resort. We have continued to lobby in the UK for increased Government spending on flood defences and we have made further investments in our technology, such as our storm prediction and flood risk tools. We are expanding our range of environmental products and have a strong pipeline of innovative new products which we plan to introduce during 2008. In Ireland, our new eco friendly head quarters (due for completion in 2008) will be a flagship for energy efficiency. We have also embedded a green culture within the business with the launch of the 'Green Team' where are employees are know adopting environmentally friendly behaviour.

For further details about our CSR policy in Ireland, please contact David Magee on 01 290 1194 or email dave.magee@ie.rsagroup.com

Download our Corporate Responsibility Report.