The Insurance Sector’s Contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals: A Story Worth Telling?

To remain competitive in the increasingly demanding and diverse global marketplace of the twenty-first century, some insurers have chosen to move away from their traditional position as mere suppliers of insurance products designed to cover insurable risks and/or provide investment opportunities, refashioning themselves as service providers in neighbouring sectors such as healthcare, and, more recently, being pushed to become what could now be described as solution seekers, creating their own ecosystems by offering customers the prospect of a strong and lasting value-creating partnership. This completely transforms their customer relationship from distant and sporadic to close and permanent in an attempt to create value, gain trust and increase customer satisfaction. This value creation could also enhance the industry’s already very significant potential to being key players in contemporary society’s global efforts to meet the United Nations’ sustainable development goals (‘SDG’). The actual or potential contribution of the insurance industry to furthering the SDG is also potentially relevant to the industry’s work towards gaining trust and increasing customer satisfaction. In this chapter, we look at the industry’s perceptions of, and narratives on, their actual contribution to the SDG. Our main focus is on existing reports that reflect how the industry presents itself to the world in this context. We conclude that insurers seem to be falling short when it comes to narrating their own contribution to the SDG. This appears to be, at least in part, a consequence of the industry’s widespread lack of awareness and common misperceptions about the various economic, social and governance aspects of sustainability, as well as of the industry’s actual and potential role in contributing to the furthering of some SDG. Our chapter includes a case study of Portuguese-based insurance company Fidelidade.