Events

UNEP FI 2003 Global Roundtable

Sustaining Value: A Meeting on Finance and Sustainability

20-21 October, 2003 | Tokyo, Japan

Agenda: Insuring Sustainability

• Exploring insurance products, services, and approaches which support sustainability.
• The internal and external drivers affecting the sustainability activities of insurers.

Speakers:

Risk, The Environment and the Role of the Insurance Industry
Mr. Bruce Thomas, Divisional Underwriting Officer & Sustainability Manager, Asia Division, Swiss Re, with introduction from Ms. Helen Bloustein, Senior Adviser - Finance Sector, EPA Victoria
Presentation (PDF: 160 KB)

Sustainability Ratings for Insurance Companies
Mr. Robert Hassler, Chief Executive Officer, oekom research
Presentation (PDF: 294 KB)

Mr. Yukio Takishita, Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance
Presentation (PDF: 173 KB)

Chair:

Mr. Toshihiko Goto, Chair Environmental Auditing Research Institute & Member, Board of Directors of GRI

Speaker Biographies:

Mr. Bruce Thomas, Divisional Underwriting Officer & Sustainability Manager, Asia Division, Swiss Re

Bruce Thomas was educated at Trinity College at the University of Melbourne completing a degree of Bachelor of Commerce in Accounting and Economics in 1974.

Bruce joined the Swiss Re Group in October 1976 and was appointed a Divisional Underwriting Officer effective 1 July 2002. He is Swiss Re's Product Manager for Alternative Risk Transfer business in Asia and is active in development of business opportunities in a number of Asian markets.

Bruce is a CPA and a Fellow of the Australian and New Zealand Institute of Insurance & Finance.

He is a member of a number of Committees of the Insurance Council of Australia and is a member of the Board of the Insurance Disaster Response Organisation, a Director of Risk Frontiers Natural Hazards Research Centre at Macquarie University and Chairman of Insurance Statistics Australia Limited. He is a member of the National Advisory Board of Environment Business Australia and the UNEP Australasian Insurance Advisory Committee.

Bruce has been Swiss Re's spokesman on climate change and environmental issues in Australia and New Zealand since 1998 and Swiss Re Asia's Sustainability Manager since November 2002.

^ top

Mr. Robert Hassler, Chief Executive Officer, oekom research

Robert Hassler has been working since 1993 in the fields of Sustainability Rating. He is Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of oekom research AG, a Munich-based Sustainability Rating agency providing research to a wide range of institutional investors and asset managers.

He graduated in business administration at the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich after a two year vocational training in an auditing company. After a six months engagement in the department of Environmental Economics at the ifo-Institute, one of the most prominent economic research institutes in Germany, he joined oekom publishing house as co-founder and head of environmental research in 1992. One year later he started oekom's rating activities by winning an international tender. He was managing director of oekom publishing house from 1997 to 2000. In 1999 the sustainability research division of oekom publishing house was transferred into the newly founded oekom research AG.

Mr. Hassler is also co-founder of several associations, such as the Corporate Responsibilty Interface Centre (CRIC e.V.) and Forum Nachhaltige Geldanlagen e.V. (German Social Investment Forum) of which he has been member of the executive board since 2001.

^ top

Mr. Toshihiko Goto, Co-chair GRI Forum Japan, GRI Member BoD; Chair, Environmental Auditing Research Group

Toshihiko Goto specializes in environmental and CSR management, sustainability reporting, and SRI.

In 1991, he co-founded the Environmental Auditing Research Group (EARG), one of the leading research NGOs in Japan.

He joined GRI (Global Reporting Initiative) in 1998 and has served as a member of the steering committee, from 2002 as Member Board of Directors. He is co-chairing the NER (Network for Environmental Reporting), a multi-sector NGO for environmental reporting, established in 1998 with the support from the Ministry of the Environment (MoE), in Japan.

He also founded GRI Forum Japan, an independent multi-sector forum for the sustainability reporting with close relationship with GRI.

In 2002, he founded a preparatory body for SIF-J (Social investment forum Japan) which will be a permanent body in November 2003.

Before joining NGO world, he worked in the insurance industry where he focused on risk management and insurance production for large corporations, specifically oil and petrochemical corporations after graduating from Tokyo University, faculty of law in 1964.

He is teaching at Shiga Prefectural University, Kyoto Gakuen University, and Tokyo Keisai University as a part-time lecturer.

He is serving as a committees' member of governments, such as MoE, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Traffic, Shiga prefecture and so on.

He is a member of the Sub-Committee 4 (EPE) & WG4 (Environmental communication) of the Japanese National Committee for ISO/TC207.

^ top