Materiality
The first mapping of the Company’s strategic stakeholders was performed in 2009 and has been revised when necessary. At the end of 2019, the materiality review process was conducted by a third party and included discussions with the senior management, followed by the definition of SulAmérica’s priority aspects regarding the main external stakeholders – brokers, customers, regulatory bodies, investors, shareholders, and service providers.
The process was internally reviewed in 2020, in view of the sale of the Auto and Other property and casualty business unit, and after the review, the Company publicly announced its strategic sustainability topics in 2022, all of which considered material with their boundaries and impacts within and outside the Organization. These topics are the following: Personnel Development, Creation of Shared Value, Responsible Investment, Responsible Value Chain and Climate Change.
Also, two transversal themes were identified as they make the other ones viable: Innovation and Digital Transformation and Governance, Risks and Compliance (GRC) Culture.
The review process of the material topics provided greater qualitative and important information which were developed into the Company’s sustainability and business strategy by updating SulAmérica’s Sustainability Policy, that lays the foundations for the Company’s sustainability guidelines and guides its businesses in the long term.
During 2022, these themes will be discussed in multidisciplinary work groups to define the ambition, commitments and specific indicators for monitoring the Company’s progress in the materialization of the strategic themes in SulAmérica’s sustainability agenda.
SulAmérica recognizes that the success of its businesses depends on establishing relationships where collective benefits are greater than the individual ones. Accordingly, it aims to establish a virtuous cycle of value creation and sharing with its stakeholders, cultivating long-lasting relationships to promote integral health.
We act by managing the risk of our beneficiaries, protecting the financial, emotional and physical health and with our Coordinated Care strategy, providing the best clinical outcome to our patients. We partner with our brokers, service providers and distributors, sharing our integral health vision to offer the most appropriate solutions to people.
Our Coordinated Care strategy uses technology and data analysis to monitor the experience of our beneficiaries and provide them the most appropriate treatments. Our Coordinated Care providers are able to have a more complete view of patients and appropriately guide them. The Active Health program works on the promotion of health and well-being and prevention of diseases, minimizing risks and disease complications. We extended our care to life insurance customers, providing them the Médico na Tela (physician on screen) service. We promote financial education among our customers and participate in their financial planning, including retirement planning through our products. We offer our customers products for emotional health, and we have SulAmérica Institute, dedicated to integral health, initially focusing on the emotional health of underprivileged people in vulnerable situation.
We measure our collaboration on this topic through the indicators of the Coordinated Care and Active Health programs. We also evaluate the improvement in the clinical outcome of our beneficiaries that participate in the Active Health programs such as Futura Mamãe (Future Mommy), Única Mente (Mental Health), Coluna Ativa (Active Back Care) and Idoso Bem Cuidado (Well Cared Elderly).
SulAmérica understands that it owes its achievements to its employees. They are its source of intellect, energy and movement that transforms ideas into projects, products and services. Therefore, it values and promotes diversity, through an inclusive and welcoming environment. It creates structures, processes, policies and environments that allow employees to realize and develop their full potential.
SulAmérica has a positive impact on this theme. The care with people is not limited to the nature of the business, being also provided through the relationship we have established with a positive balance between personal and professional life.
We devote special attention to the emotional health of our employees and encourage our corporate customers to care about it too. We believe that people can have a sense of identity in the workplace and be who they are. We want to be drivers of good practices of inclusion and diversity and promote this cause in our entire value chain.
Among the policies and processes that we have on the theme are our Inclusion and Diversity Program, Code of Conduct, Corporate Sustainability Policy and SulAmérica’s Work Model, developed to accommodate a better relationship between professional and personal life. We also aim to promote the integral health of employees through the benefits and programs provided by the Company.
We monitor our evolution on this topic by measuring employee engagement, the progress of the action plans devised by pollinating groups, the Company’s population data, including shares of minority group, absentee rate, training hours completed by our employees, and key positions with succession plans mapped.
SulAmérica aims to enhance the social and environmental impact created by investments and contribute to the achievement of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and the promotion of a sustainable financial market through Responsible Investment practices. For this purpose, it adopts a long-term strategy, based on a solid process of integration of the ESG factors into investments, aiming to mitigate institutional risks, reveal opportunities for growth, promote portfolio diversification and reduce risks to investors.
Our impact is made beyond our control zone. The companies in which we invest may be responsible for significant impacts, so we work to positively influence them and try to understand and measure the impact of our portfolio.
Our aim is to constantly strengthen the governance of our management practices that consider the social, environmental and corporate governance risks and opportunities integrated into our businesses and in the ethical and transparent relationship of our institution with our stakeholders.
We are signatories of the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), we have a Responsible Investment Policy and a Social and Environmental Risk Policy, commitments that directly influence our investments.
We monitor the evolution of this theme observing the total assets that went through ESG criteria assessments and funding of ESG-labeled products (which have specific investment criteria).
SulAmérica wants to be a driver of transformation of the business ecosystem through the mobilization of its value chain. For this purpose, it encourages legal compliance and engagement of partners to mitigate risks and increase the positive impact on the society and environment. It also take actions to guarantee that customers, employees, suppliers and business partners comply with human rights.
We understand that our impact on the value chain is an important share of the revenue of service providers, distributors and brokers. We want to have a relationship that provides mutual benefits and is aligned with our principles. Therefore, besides observing the sustainability criteria in the relationship and establishing contractual clauses, we promote the engagement of our partners.
We monitor the percentage of suppliers that were assessed according to social and environmental criteria, adherence to the Code of Ethics and labor and social and environmental clauses in contracts.
Climate change is probably the more complex risk that society currently faces. Both the issue and its solutions are intergenerational, international and interdependent. SulAmérica aims to understand and manage climate risks and opportunities to work on the promotion of an adapted, resilient and low-carbon economy.
To manage these risks and impacts, we have the Corporate Sustainability Policy, the Environmental Policy, the Social and Environmental Risk Policy, and the Responsible Investment Policy. In addition, we took on external commitments such as, for example, the adherence to the PRI and PSI.
We use technology and innovation to put in practice solutions that reduce the natural resource consumption and emissions by the Company itself or third parties (customers and partners), of which the process digitization is worthy of note.
We monitor our emissions by adopting the GHG Protocol methodology and monitoring the emissions of our portfolio. Also through our environmental management system, we monitor the environmental indicators in relation to the targets set by the Company, including emission cuts.
Stakeholder Engagement
[SULA 13/GRI 102-40, 102-42 e 102-43, SULA 14/GRI 102-44]
In 2014, the Company conducted a diagnostic study of its stakeholder engagement practices. Using the AA 1000 Stakeholder Engagement Standard (SES) of Accountability, SulAmérica identified its main target audiences, the Company’s forms of interaction with these audiences, their risks and opportunities. In this process, the Company approved its Stakeholders Engagement Policy, where it presents the approach the organization adopts to engage its audiences and the limits of these interactions. In addition, it prioritized the stakeholders with whom it develops actions focusing on engagement: brokers, associates, service providers, and customers. In 2021, there were no changes in this stakeholder map and we made official some actions that we describe next.
SulAmérica’s Stakeholders Map
Stakeholder Engagement Initiatives
Today the Company uses existing processes and relationship channels to understand the expectations and demands of its stakeholders and, whenever feasible and possible, it incorporates action plans in its planning and management cycle.
SulAmérica’s Broker Reward Program, also known as PRA Corretor in Portuguese, is based on the five pillars of the program: Service, Support to the Strategy, Infrastructure, Support, and Incentive. SulAmérica also offers incentive programs per product, through which brokers may, depending on their performance and portfolio management, run for additional commissions. The objective is to support the approach of brokers, making them capable of working with several products ans solutions, for different times of the lives of our customers.
Thinking about the future, SulAmérica created the program New Generation Broker, a succession program geared towards training the children of brokers, which carried out every semester, with the objective of awakening their interest in a broad vision of the insurance market, encouraging knowledge sharing between participants and the professionals of the insurance Company. In addition to providing an opportunity to have a close look at how an insurance Company works, the program contributes to strengthen the already existing business partnership with brokers, which then starts to exist with their children, nurturing a long-term relationship, a typical feature of SulAmérica’s relationship with its insurance brokers. In lectures about Products, Sales Techniques, Leadership and Succession, Sustainability, and also group dynamics and guided activities, the new generation of brokers presents suggestions and criticisms that may help improve the Company’s products, services and processes.
SulAmérica’s strategic positioning has organizational culture as one of its pillars. This pillar contemplates a set of human capital development projects and actions that support the Company to ensure business sustainability. The consistency of these actions is reflected in the annual engagement survey, which in 2021 reached a favorability rate of 87% with 94% of employee participation.
SulAmérica Active Health Program is a set of ongoing initiatives focusing on integrated health management, with actions including from healthy members to the most complex cases.
With actions to promote health, well-being, and prevention of diseases and their consequences, it helps companies to look after their most precious asset: people.
Initiatives are implemented according to the needs of members and maturity of the Company in the management of health and well-being. All of this is aligned with the expertise of Health Active, a reference in the development and implementation of sustainable health strategies.
The Company encourages its suppliers to adopt an environmentally and socially responsible management model. For this reason, during the procurement and contracting processes, all potential suppliers are submitted to an assessment which includes sustainability criteria. In the case of suppliers scoring below expectations, the Company guides them on the need for evolution and encourages the adoption of initiatives in line with best practices on these themes.
Last update: June 14, 2022