Non-financial disclosure in the insurance sector. Investigation into the materiality of qualitative and quantitative sustainability KPI

Abstract

The availability of ESG information plays an increasingly important role for stakeholders (See D’Anselmi, De Girolamo, 2017; Garizadeh-Beiragh et al. 2020; Kraft, 2022). Directive 2014/95/EU testifies to the consolidation of CSR in corporate reporting processes, as a moment of change not only organizational, but above all, cultural. To date, companies have a fair degree of discretion in the way they communicate non-financial information and in the choice of performance indicators; hence the need to investigate the existence of specificities attributable to the sector to which they belong, in order to increase the significance of sustainability reports for all stakeholders. The empirical research concerned the sustainability reports in the period 2019-2022 of companies in the insurance sector belonging to the Euro Stoxx Large Europe ESG. The survey mapped the type and number of performance indicators used in the sustainability reports of the sample, according to the perspectives of the GRI Standards. Not all companies have prepared their reports in accordance with the GRI; therefore, some aspects – such as the economic value generated and distributed; materiality analysis; stakeholder engagement policies – are not treated by all insurance companies in the same way and with the same level of detail. In general, the dimensions of interest of the information are: community, personnel, customers, suppliers, environment and stakeholders. From the results of the research, it is possible to deduce the incidence of qualitative and quantitative indicators on the total. The distribution of indicators by area of interest shows in the same year, in line with previous years, a prevalence of indicators relating to the personal sphere (220 in number), with an incidence on the total of 30.51%. The comparison with previous years is interesting, from which emerges, in general, an increase in the three-year period of the mapped indicators, from 583 in 2019 to 721 in 2021.