A critical part of developing our sustainability ambition is to identify and prioritize issues of material importance to the company and its stakeholders. In 2018, Zurich launched an evidence-based data-driven materiality assessment leveraging our internal risk expertise, deep engagement with stakeholders, and insights generated from state-of-the-art big data tools to identify and prioritize our most material ESG issues. Our approach is based on international best practice standards including leading sustainability indices and the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) G4 guidelines. Through combining these three sources of internal and external feedback, our materiality assessment follows these five steps:

1. Identify key stakeholders groups to engage

• Zurich identified 10 key stakeholder groups to include in our data-driven materiality assessment.

2. Consulting stakeholders to identify ESG issues of concern

• Engaged with stakeholders through interviews, meetings and surveys to identify which ESG issues affected them the most and those which they thought were most important for Zurich to address;
• Carried out research and benchmarking;
• Identified 21 ESG issues of concern for the insurance sector in general and to Zurich specifically. 

3. Evidence-based and data-driven prioritization of most material ESG issues

• Rigorous evidence-based approach was used to prioritize Zurich’s most material issues using artificial intelligence and big data through a specialized business intelligence software tool called Datamaran®;
• Various sources used as individual inputs into a custom-made model to build an evidence-based materiality matrix.

4. Validation of material issues by risk management specialists and our Sustainability Leaders Council

• Formal verification by Zurich’s internal team of risk management specialists and our Sustainability Leaders Council.

5. Ongoing monitoring, measurement and adjustment

• Each of our top material issues will have impact targets and specific management approaches that contribute to our overall sustainability ambition.

Zurich’s materiality assessment process evaluates the perceived importance of each ESG issue to Zurich’s future success and then maps the results onto a materiality matrix. The y-axis indicates the perceived importance to our external stakeholders, while the x-axis indicates the perceived importance internally to Zurich. The issues in the top right, which are important to both our stakeholders and to our business, constitute Zurich’s strategic sustainability focus areas. Fair & inclusive workforce and workforce development are addressed by our ’supporting a global workforce-in-transition’ pillar. Issues such as digitalization & innovation, and data privacy & security are addressed via our ‘inspiring confidence in an increasing digital society’ pillar. And climate change and natural disasters issues are addressed by our ‘addressing the impacts of a changing climate’ pillar. Read more about these three pillars in the section about our sustainability commitment below.