With a stated purpose to improve lives through inclusive capitalism, financial services giant Legal & General recognises that addressing climate change is the next step in delivering on that promise. To this end, it is one of its six growth drivers and embedded throughout the organisation, influencing how Legal & General invests its proprietary assets, how it in turn uses its influence as one of the world’s leading asset managers and simply how it operates.
Legal & General’s 2020 Climate Report – its third – once again supplements its annual report and documents its path to climate stability while demonstrating its progress in this evolving area of corporate writing.
The repo
rt has four objectives. It has to become a key part of Legal & General’s corporate communications. It has to demonstrate the strategic importance of addressing climate change. It must provide information in line with the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures. And it has to demonstrate its thinking behind the detailed disclosures.
The 35-page document adopts the straightforward approach of Legal & General’s annual report, but further evolves this to ensure that complex content is as accessible as possible. From the outset, though, Legal & General is clear that it does not have all the answers and that this is an evolving situation, both in terms of approach and metrics used, with the reporting structure described as a ‘best endeavours’ analysis. But, as both its chairman and chief executive make clear in their opening statements, the insurance company wants to be at the forefront of this movement.
In line with the TCFD recommendations, the report contains a summary page structured around the eleven recommended disclosures under the themes: governance, strategy, risk management, and metrics and targets.
The report reiterates Legal & General’s five climate risk policy statements, which were strengthened in the relevant year by its commitment to the Science Based Target Initiative. Underpinning its three strategic pillars – investment, influence and operate – the report highlights actions currently being undertaken as well as the group’s plans for the next five and ten years.
To demonstrate transparency in this evolving area of reporting, Legal & General also sets out the considerations it has made and views taken in assessing the climate risks and opportunities. It has also developed a bespoke framework Destination, in partnership with Baringa, to understand the 30-year transition, which has helped Legal & General to model three global energy pathways: business as usual, well below 2 degrees, and disorderly.
