About
Premiums4Good is an initiative started by QBE where we allocate a portion of customer premiums to impact investments that aim to create positive environmental and/or social change, alongside a financial return – at no additional cost to the customer.
Innovation presentation
Through Premiums4Good, a portion of customers’ insurance premium is allocated to impact investments that help fund initiatives that aim to make positive change, things like increasing renewable energy supply, reducing homelessness and improving education in remote communities. Impact investments are investments made into companies, organisations, and funds with the intention to generate social and environmental impact, alongside a financial return. Our impact investments include green social bonds, social impact bonds and impact investment funds. Premiums4Good supports our belief that we can deliver attractive risk adjusted returns while also seeking to deliver positive social and environmental impact.
Through Premiums4Good, we invest in 11 impact areas that help to address environmental and social needs. These impact areas align with the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and our process maps each investment against the SDGs. Our impact areas are:
Environmental
• Sustainable Energy
• Food and Agriculture
• Water
• Resource Efficiency, Recycling, Re-use, and Conservation
• Urban and Community Development
Social
• Housing and Social Real Estate
• Education and Employment
• Social Inclusion, Diversity and Gender
• Financial Inclusion
• Health
• Social Care and Provision of Community Services
As of 31 December 2023, QBE has USD 28.67 billion assets under management across assets such as bonds, unlisted property, infrastructure and equity. Our ambition is to grow our impact investments to USD 2 billion by the end of 2025. As of 31 December 2023, we have invested USD 1.54 billion across 108 securities. This represents over 300% growth in our impact investments since we started in 2016.
With Premiums4Good, and in our capacity as an institutional investor, we are signaling that there is demand for impact investment. These investments span multiple asset classes including fixed income and private equity, as well as catalytic investments in alternative assets such as social impact bonds and first-time impact funds. We have invested in opportunities considered to be ‘firsts’ and seek out innovative investments to support this strategy. For example, in 2020, we invested in Save The Children Impact Investment Fund, which was a first-time fund manager, and in Australia’s first “climate equity-linked green bond”, which saw QBE collaborate with BNP Paribas, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and Aware Super.
Uniqueness of the project
As customers increasingly seek to do business with corporations whose social and environmental values align with theirs, we believe Premiums4Good offers our customers a unique opportunity to align their everyday insurance spending with their sustainability ambitions and beliefs. In addition, we believe this program helps strengthen our relationships with our customers through our unique opt-in option. While a portion of customers’ insurance premium is allocated to impact investments, select customers are also invited to opt-in 100% of their premium to the program. Opting into QBE Premiums4Good is free and presents no additional cost or policy impact for customers. In addition, we provide customers with an annual update about which projects their premiums have supported through our Investment Impact Report, which they are able to use in their own communications and reporting to stakeholders, boards, employees, and customers.
We are proud of our active role in sharing the value of impact investing. Our hope is that, by participating in impact investments, Premiums4Good can help crowd in institutional capital to grow the impact market. Premiums4Good is also a collaborative program across our entire business model, which strengthens ties with our customers and makes investments that help to make positive environmental and social impact. We believe this initiative represented a genuine innovation for the insurance industry when we started in 2016, and it continues to set QBE apart from our competitors today.
