We are helping where we can
For our international colleagues, such as our colleagues at Union in Slovakia, Eureko Sigorta in Turkey and our IT helpdesk in Poland, this serious situation is very close to home. The situation is also very worrying and uncertain for our colleagues from a Ukrainian background or with family and friends in the area. In close contact with our international colleagues, we are looking at what they need and how we can help them. The Achmea Foundation is working with colleagues who want to help. Our colleagues in Slovakia are already involved in campaigns launched by Achmea in the Netherlands. For example they are already working hard on the ground to collect goods and raise funds to assist hospitals and other facilities in Ukraine. On the Voor Elkaar platform, Achmea has launched a special crowdfunding campaign to contribute to these efforts.

We are excluding Russia from our investments
Achmea has limited investments in Russia and Belarus[1]. We have added Russia and Belarus to the country exclusion list. By placing these two countries on the country exclusion list, government bonds and state enterprises (interest of >50%) are excluded. This means that we will no longer make any new investments and will sell our existing investments as soon as we can do so responsibly. This is not possible at the moment because stock markets are closed or because of sanctions, for example.

We are informing our customers
We are informing our customers about potential consequences for their products or services (for example, changes in cover). We are doing this via our various customer channels. Further information is also available from the Dutch Association of Insurers: https://www.verzekeraars.nl/verzekeringsthemas/schade/rampen-terreur/verzekeren-oekra%C3%AFne

 [1] Bonds €15 million in Russia and Belarus. Shares: €14 million in Russia - prices at the end of January 2022)

Achmea has been offsetting its remaining CO₂ footprint since 2011 by purchasing carbon certificates. As part of its ambitious sustainability agenda, Achmea is currently investing in long-term offsetting with specific forestry projects in Australia, Iceland and elsewhere. Achmea is investing €4 million in the Land Life Company reforestation programme.

Bianca Tetteroo, chair of the Executive Board of Achmea: “As a cooperative insurance company, we want to contribute to a healthy, safe and sustainable society. We are doing this for our customers in many different ways, through our investments and of course by also looking at our own operations. We are well on the way to fully climate-neutral business operations by 2030. Step by step, we are reducing our CO₂ footprint with an ambitious sustainability plan which, among other things, addresses our energy consumption, mobility, waste flows . We offset our remaining CO₂ emissions in as natural a way as possible. Planting one million trees is, therefore, a great step. And furthermore we are aligned with the ‘EU climate action and European Green Deal’, the European target to plant three billion trees by 2030.”

A healthy, safe and sustainable society

Land Life Company will plant about one million trees for Achmea during the next three years and this will restore about 920 hectares of degraded land in Australia and Iceland. Over the next forty years, these trees will absorb about 200,000 tonnes of CO₂. Biodiversity will also be restored as Land Life Company uses a range of indigenous trees. In addition, the projects offer benefits to local communities.

Achmea and Land Life Company alliance
Achmea has been the largest external investor in the reforestation company Land Life Company since 2020 through the Achmea Innovation Fund. In this way, Achmea’s Fund is supporting Land Life Company’s mission to restore two billion hectares of degraded land around the world. Tjeerd Anema, CEO of Land Life Company: “We were delighted when Achmea joined us as an investor last year to support our mission. It’s great that this agreement means that we can now also act specifically together in the field to actively remove CO₂ from the air and restore land.”

Economies of scale and the pooling of knowledge will allow Achmea to provide even better service to its customers with appropriate and sustainable mortgage solutions. In this way, Achmea will enhance its strengths in the housing and mortgage markets.

Achmea is today taking a first step on this by combining its operational mortgage activities. In addition to modernising and developing its mortgage products, Achmea is focusing on granting and managing mortgages. 

This statement is published by Achmea Bank and contains information that is or could be classified as inside information for the purposes of Article 7 of the Market Abuse Regulation (EU) 596/2014(MAR).

About Achmea Bank

Achmea Bank is part of Achmea and provides mortgages and savings products to the retail market in the Netherlands via the Centraal Beheer and Woonfonds labels. Achmea Bank is licensed to provide financial services under the Financial Supervision Act (Wft). Achmea Bank has a lending portfolio of approximately €11 billion and manages savings of approximately €6 billion. Achmea Bank is located in Tilburg. www.achmeabank.nl

Investor Relations Achmea Bank

Rudi Kramer

T: +31 6 53 26 45 52

E: rudi.kramer@achmea.nl

Throughout 2019, VBDO examined the sustainability profile of thirty insurers and fifty pension funds. The investigation shone a spotlight on policy, implementation, management and transparency of sustainable investment.

As a large institutional investor with managed assets of more than €140 billion, Achmea has an influence on the companies it invests in. Last spring, Achmea tightened up its corporate responsibility policy and implemented further improvements. Climate is the key element in this. For example, Achmea recently announced that it would no longer invest in companies that generate more than 30% of their revenue from coal or from the extraction of oil from tar sands. The tightening of our policy follows the signing of the Paris climate goals and the ambitions of the government in this regard. Achmea has also committed itself to the Climate Agreement in the past year.

Willem van Duin, Chairman of Achmea’s Executive Board: “The fact that we were the second highest ranking insurer is on the one hand a great performance, but on the other it is above all an encouragement to continue as a socially responsible investor. As a cooperative insurer, we focus on long-term value creation and sustainable trading and investment is perfectly aligned with this. We aim to make a greater social impact with our investments. Our engagement programme, which involves us engaging actively with companies and entering into agreements to encourage them to operate their businesses more responsibly, is an important contribution to this.”

You can find the full report here.

The exhibition is called ‘Ahead of its time’ and shows important and special moments in the history of Achmea and society in general. Achmea’s role in society becomes clear as you look at the major events of the past, when we often played an important role in the lives of our customers. Society is constantly changing and what our customers want is changing too. We have been responding to this for many years now, while adhering to the same basic premises we started with. In the past, people only insured themselves against fire and death because they owned very little. Nowadays, we share more and more of what we own. For example, increasingly we share a car with several households. The sharing economy calls for a different way of insuring, which is why Centraal Beheer also insures shared vehicles.

Willem van Duin, Chairman of Achmea’s Executive Board: “Achmea was founded in 1811 based on the concept of solidarity and the conviction that you can achieve more by working together than by working alone. This has always been our guiding principle. We cherish our cooperative heritage, not because of a nostalgia for the past, but because the basic premises we had at the outset still guide how we view the world today. We have been at the heart of society for more than two hundred years and today we work with the heart of the past and today’s technology.”

“Achmea has a rich history with lots of fantastic archive material, says company historian Wim Dral. Achmea’s history dates back to 1811, when Ulbe Piers Draisma from Achlum in Friesland, along with a small number of farmers and notable figures, agreed to help one another after a fire caused by hay overheating or by lightening. Wim Dral: “The exhibition includes original documents from the time and even a device for measuring the temperature in a hay stack.”

The climate is changing and this is causing increasing disruption, suffering and loss for our customers and for society. Achmea’s strategy is to contribute to a healthy, safe and future-proof society, which is why Achmea today signed the Climate Agreement and why it wants to contribute concrete solutions. By signing the agreement, Achmea is supporting the Paris climate goals and the ambitions of the Dutch government.

Willem van Duin, chairman of Achmea’s Executive Board: “As an insurer, we are seeing an increase in the losses suffered by our customers as a result of extreme weather. We want to help our customers protect themselves against losses by offering insight and solutions. This will help customers become more resilient to the impact of climate change. Climate change also affects the investments we manage for our customers. As an investor, we also have an influence on the extent to which the businesses we invest in operate sustainably.”

This also makes climate change an important theme in our responsible investment policy. It also means that we can start the conversation with businesses about their role in energy transition and in reducing CO2 emissions. This week, Achmea announced that it would no longer be investing in companies that generate more than 30% of their revenue from coal or from the extraction of oil from tar sands. These companies will be placed on the exclusion list.

Together with partners, Achmea is working on developing innovations, such as BlueLabel, a service that provides insight into the impact of climate change, such as floods and extreme heat, at street level.

Homies is a system that operates with a social alarm. Once it’s installed, you enter the telephone numbers of your neighbours and family and friends living nearby in the Homies app. If the sensors in your house detect a fire or movement when you are not at home, your friends and neighbours are notified through a temporary WhatsApp group and asked to check the house. This means that people you know are at the door within a few moments to help. After the situation has been dealt with, the temporary WhatsApp group is automatically deleted. With Homies, HEMA is offering an easily accessible solution for people who want to make their homes more secure with the help of friends and neighbours. Homies is simple and affordable and above all improves social cohesion in the neighbourhood. 40% of people say that they have more contact with their neighbours after using Homies. HEMA is offering Homies as an option in combination with HEMA Woonverzekeringen home insurance so that customers are properly insured if something does happen.

Dick Koopman, director of Homies Alarm: ’Homies ensures social safety in the neighbourhood with easy-to-use equipment. The alarm is only raised if something is really happening. The smart equipment alerts your pre-registered network.’

Laura Geerlings, Financial Services Director at HEMA: ’HEMA wants to make day-to-day life more enjoyable, easier and better. Offering an accessible social alarm fits in very well with this. It’s exactly because of our local nature that we, as HEMA, can use Homies to make neighbourhoods safer and more social. Homies means that HEMA is making a smart alarm system accessible to everyone.’

Homies Alarm will be on sale in selected HEMA branches and is also available via hema.nl/homies and homiesalarm.nl/hema.

HEMA Woonverzekeringen home insurance is provided by InShared, an Achmea subsidiary.

Achmea is seeing an increase in the damage and disruption caused by climate change. This is why we are excluding the most polluting coal companies from our investment portfolio. This industry is responsible for a very large share of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. Investing in these companies is no longer compatible with Achmea’s strategy.

Intensive involvement in transition to sustainability

In addition to actively excluding investments in coal companies and tar-sand processors, Achmea will also continue to exert influence by means of its intensive engagement process. Polluting companies are actively encouraged to make their business operations greener.

Willem van Duin: “Ultimately, we only want to continue investing in companies with a policy aimed at sustainability and those that are actively contributing to the energy transition. We are engaging on this issue, for example, with the remaining mining and utility companies we invest in. We are counting on these companies being able to demonstrate that they have a policy to switch to more sustainable alternatives over a fixed time frame.”

Achmea Investment Management invests the assets of its customers, including pension funds, and is the third largest institutional asset manager in the Netherlands with more than €130 billion in assets under management.