Corporate responsibility is more than just nice words

Sampo published today its first group level Corporate Responsibility Report. The report provides information that we have been publishing before but that can now be found in one report.

Naturally, the fact that the new legislation obliges large corporations to report their non-financial information is one reason for publishing this report. However, as the CEO and President Kari Stadigh states in the preface of the report, the key reason is the increasing importance of corporate responsibility to our business and society at large, and the amount of interest our stakeholders have in the topic.

Corporate responsibility is no longer just a hot trend or a bunch of nice words to boost the image of the company. Corporate responsibility is now part of companies' everyday business, as it should be. The legislation draws the broad lines for responsibility reporting but the largest requirements come from investors. Today, investors are well-informed and require that companies are responsible and transparent. They have a good motive for that; in the long-term these kind of companies tend to perform better compared to their peers and thus create value for their shareholders.

What's new in Sampo's CR Report? For example, the carbon footprint of our direct equity and fixed income investments. In 2017, we measured the carbon footprint of investments made by If, Mandatum Life (excluding wealth management) and Sampo plc for the first time. The total carbon footprint of the equity portfolio was 146,748 tCO2e at the end of 2017. This corresponds to a relative footprint of 75 tCO2e/EUR million invested. The footprint is 49 per cent below the global benchmark index.

Another interesting figure disclosed in the report is Sampo’s tax footprint. In 2017, the taxes of Sampo plc, If and Mandatum Life totaled EUR 988 million. In Finland, we paid taxes worth EUR 566 million which makes Sampo one the largest tax payers in the country.

Investors and other stakeholders may be curious about how the responsibility is taken into account in risk management and governance, HR management and customers relations or how diversity and equality is seen in Sampo. All this information can be found in the report.

As mentioned, the CR Report is our first. We are happy with the report, but our ambitions are higher. In 2017, we focused on identifying corporate responsibility data sources and responsibilities within the group. Our goal was to create strong basis for the ongoing processes, and thereby for future reports.

“The work with responsibility matters is continuous development and aim to improve. My view is that we are on the right track. This year, our goal is to develop our reporting and our internal practices. We also aim to clarify the Group’s targets, map out development areas and make responsibility more systematical at the group level”, says Johanna Tynkkynen, CR Manager of Sampo.