Constructive, meticulous conversations

Since last year, insurers have been working on the development of ESG standards, organised by the Dutch Association of Insurers with support from Deloitte. “Good substantive guidance requires both broad and deep expertise,” says Jan Jacob Blussé, project leader from Deloitte. “Broad, because it concerns cars, houses, and property development. Deep, because it concerns building insurance clauses, underwriting, and climate mitigation. This combination of expertise is ensured in this project.”

The project started in early 2025 with discussions on ESG standards for the private car insurance and business insurance sectors. These standards have now been published, as have standards for private housing and road transport. Among other things, work is now being done on a standard for measuring climate adaptation. The programme is therefore in its third phase. This is striking at a time when the European Parliament has considerably weakened the CSRD and sustainability regulations are under political pressure. Minkenberg: “Insurers in particular want to be fully committed to the world of tomorrow. To become climate neutral, good, comparable data is needed.”  

The Deloitte team, which combines industry knowledge, sustainability, data and reporting, guides these sessions as a neutral party. They prepare the sessions, monitor the method, bring in additional expertise where useful and keep up the pace. Blussé: “We have brought together the product experts in one consultation structure, the reporting experts in another and the sustainability officers in yet another. Because we let people of the same blood type talk to each other, we keep the meetings compact and they understand each other quickly. We ensure that matters that another group has to think about or about which fundamental choices have to be made end up with the right group.”

Minkenberg: “Because the sessions are supervised by someone from outside our sector, the conversations are effective and the outcome is really something from the collective. Also because the required expertise is considerable. I do not think you can do that very well without external support. Also, preparing and recording everything in a relevant way is a lot of work.”

Even with the more difficult choices, the presence of a neutral knowledge-intensive party is pleasant, Minkenberg believes. Blussé: “Every insurer has its own approach. One person counts a car that was only added to the portfolio in May for the entire year, the other looks at how many months a car is part of the portfolio. But for an ESG standard, you have to have an opinion on it as a collective and it also has to be practically feasible. So these are quite complicated conversations, in which the participants have to break free from what they are used to doing. Fortunately, this has always worked very well so far, because the starting point is always to arrive at the best representation of reality.”