Insurance giant Sun Life Financial Inc. (Sun Life) is taking a unique approach to sustainability. In September 2021, the Toronto-based financial services firm announced the appointment of Alanna Boyd as senior vice president and chief sustainability officer – a newly created role focusing solely on sustainability and ESG (environmental, social, and governance) strategy, reporting directly to Sun Life president and CEO Kevin Strain.
Reflecting on Boyd’s appointment at the virtual RBC Capital Markets Global ESG Conference, Strain said: “I’ve always thought that you build strategy, then structure, and then you get the right people. Sustainability is part of our strategy. Structurally, having a chief sustainability officer reporting directly to me was really important. And having Alanna join and become the chief sustainability officer means I got the people bit right.”
Boyd joined Sun Life in 2016 and was most recently vice president of government, regulatory affairs & sustainability. She’s been instrumental in the development of Sun Life’s current sustainability strategy and its reporting and disclosures in recognition of growing investor interest in and demand for robust reporting on sustainability performance.
“We’ve been on this sustainability journey for a long time,” said Boyd, also at the virtual RBC Capital Markets Global ESG Conference. “We started our journey [by] looking at building a strong foundation around ESG elements. Are we operating ethically? Are we treating our clients well? Do we have a culture of inclusion? How are we reducing our impact on the environment? We built that strong foundation of ESG, managing our ESG risks, and focusing on ESG factors.
“Around 2018-2019, we said: ‘It’s great to have this strong foundation of ESG factors. But how can we do more? How can we actually maximize our impact and use the core levers of our business to tackle some of society’s largest challenges?’ So, we set about really changing the way we think about sustainability, moving away from it being managed as a source of risk [to] managing our ESG risks in terms of thinking about how we are going to create value for society and for our business as well.”
In 2019, Boyd led the development of a new purpose-led sustainability plan, which centres around Sun Life being a trusted and responsible business. This was the first time, according to Boyd, that Sun Life linked sustainability directly into its core business - to the core services, products, and decisions the firm makes to create value for its stakeholders and shareholders.
“We focused it around three main pillars: increasing financial security, fostering healthier lives, and sustainable investing, because that’s where we can have the biggest impact,” she said. “And in 2021 … we really doubled down in this area. We built on this trusted and responsible business foundation, tackling some of those really core elements of ESG, and, in 2021, we’ve embedded sustainability [throughout the business]. It is a key component of our client strategy, all of our business units now have sustainability integrated into their business strategies, [and] we’re using sustainability as a driver of innovation, which will ultimately lead us to better serve clients, communities, and drive business results.
“This work requires really deep integration; it’s transformational. We’re early on our journey, but we’re committed to embedding it in everything we do. The strategy really is about moving beyond those foundational elements of ESG and linking it into our purpose and our core strategy to drive and co-create commercial and societal value.”
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Strain became Sun Life’s 11th president and CEO in August 2021, and, as the new leader, he took the chance to step back and really analyse Sun Life’s strategy. In speaking to clients and employees, the Sun Life executive team, the board of directors, stakeholders in the business, and other CEOs in the insurance industry, he quickly realized the immense level of concern that people shared about sustainability.
“There was a real energy for doing something different [and] creating a more integrated approach with our strategy to sustainability,” he said. “For Sun Life, it was driven by a couple of things. One, we’re a $1.4 trillion asset management company, and I can tell you that MFS, InfraRed, BGO, Crescent, [and] our PFI and general account [teams] were already thinking about sustainability and what’s it doing to the investment world. We are well on our way to making sustainable investment commitments [and] to making net zero commitments as an asset manager and as an asset owner.
“At the same time, as a purpose-driven company, we’re really motivating our people to help our clients achieve lifetime financial security and to live healthier lives. And if we’re really going to be purpose driven, then it’s about creating impacts and actually helping our clients to achieve that.
“[In our sustainability strategy] we’re talking about financial security, which is in our purpose, we’re talking about health, which is in our purpose, we’re talking about sustainable investing that our asset managers will round up in through their investment philosophy and investment understanding. To integrate that into our strategy was really important. But once it’s integrated into our strategy, we’ve got to be able to execute on it, which is about structure and people.”
