It was announced this week that Belgian ICMIF member P&V Assurances was once again the recipient of the 2020 Decavi societal commitment trophy. Decavi is an independent organiser of training and events in the insurance sector in Belgium and it presented its (digital) trophies for the best life insurance products of 2020 this week including the trophy for the societal commitment.
This trophy is not awarded to a specific product in the P&V range, but rewards the efforts made on a social, economic and ecological level by the cooperative insurer.
In the press release from Decavi about this year’s trophies, P&V Assurances was commended for having always reinvested part of its profits in the community and therefore actively contributing to a more united society through its social and ecological projects. This includes the work of P&V Foundation, which intends to encourage active citizenship, fights against the exclusion of young people and works towards building a fairer society.
P&V invests part of its profits in socially relevant projects
Unlike most other insurers, P&V says that as a cooperative society the organisation is guided by values and not by short-term gain for shareholders. This means, among other things, that P&V invests part of its profits in projects that meet the needs of the community.
This year, the P&V Group freed up one million euros to help bridge the digital divide and the learning delay of children from disadvantaged families. With this budget, 1,300 young people received a new laptop during the coronavirus lockdown in Belgium. Via Linking Youth Up, a call for projects from the P&V Foundation, 66 organisations across Belgium were selected to receive help to try to improve the digital skills of young people.
P&V adheres to the principles of responsible investment
In P&V’s savings insurance offer, it deliberately opts for ethically responsible funds. When choosing fund managers, P&V Assurances says it is not guided solely by their professional knowledge of fund managers, but it is important that their values and standards correspond to those of the Group.
The minimum condition is that all funds must be managed according to the Principles of Responsible Investment (PRI), a global initiative supported by the United Nations. But P&V says it deliberately opts for partners who go further …
Controversial activities (such as the arms industry) are excluded. And fund managers are asked to apply positive selection criteria which support the environment, society and good governance (ESG). Companies that perform well in these three areas are given preference in P&V’s investment portfolio.
Since 22 June 2020, P&V has offered two explicitly sustainable funds: Degroof Petercam’s Europe Sustainable Fund and the FFG Global Flexible Sustainable Fund.
P&V favours gentler forms of mobility and prevention
This year, P&V extended its offer in order to better protect users who opt for more “gentle” forms of mobility which have a less harmful impact on the environment. In the spring, P&V Vélo launched a new fully digital bicycle insurance which won the Decavi trophy for the best innovative insurance a few weeks after its launch. And since more gentle mobility, prevention and safety go hand in hand, P&V says it is committed to making a financial contribution to GRACQ for each P&V Vélo customer, who does not put in a claim for a period of twelve months.
P&V says its goal is to offer customers much more than insurance and to give them access to services focused on prevention and road safety also.
For example, this year P&V teamed up with Skipr, a practical mobility app, which enables people to plan and make journeys using paid for means of transport including the purchase of train tickets, bus tickets, unlocking a shared bike to paying for fuel. Skipr is a centralised end-to-end mobility solution which allows people to plan their own journey by combining their chosen means of transport from the various shared forms of transport and public transport including car, train, metro, tram and scooter. Skipr is offered free of charge to P&V customers.
Other highlights from P&V’s social commitment include:
- Since 2010, the P&V Group has carried the Ecodynamic Company label (2 stars). This label rewards companies in the Brussels region which take steps to reduce the impact of their activity on the environment.
- In the workforce of the P&V Group, the parity of women (50.3%) and men (49.7%) is balanced.
- Currently, more than a third of P&V management is made up of women. The average in Belgium is 14%.
- The P&V Group has signed the Women in Finance charter on diversity. At all levels of staff, P&V measures gender differences and establishes an action plan for diversity and inclusion.
- P&V is a patron of the P&V Foundation, which actively supports citizenship and fights against the exclusion of young people in Belgian society through concrete projects and an annual Citizenship Award.
- Through the BOOST project, around fifty P&V employees volunteer their skills to serve social organizations (youth), supported by the P&V Foundation, in order to strengthen their operations.
- As a co-founder and active member of the International Cooperative & Mutual Insurance Federation (ICMIF), P&V is closely involved in the ICMIF 5-5-5 Mutual Microinsurance project. In this context, P&V is working on microinsurance for Kenyan cow farmers.
