Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance Company has won climate risk initiative of the year in InsuranceERM's Asia Pacific Awards 2025 – and the accolade is richly deserved.
Under its guiding philosophy, "Creating peace of mind, together," the insurer recognises that safeguarding the global environment cannot just be a corporate ambition, but needs to be a shared human priority. Climate risk is therefore embedded as a core pillar of the Japanese insurer's sustainability management.
The fact that Meiji Yasuda has won this award for the second consecutive year in a row is something few companies achieve, and shows how seriously the issue is taken at all levels in the business.
What set Meiji Yasuda apart is its holistic, data-driven and collaboration with stakeholders to reduce climate-related risks.
In the first place, the company analyses climate-related exposures both qualitatively and quantitatively, and reports in line with recommendations from the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures and the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures.
It also conducts scenario analyses from both the perspectives of business operators and institutional investors to better understand the risks of climate change.
As a business operator, the insurer studies the probable impact of climate change on insurance underwriting, such as the increase in death and hospitalisation benefits due to rising temperatures. It also uses MSCI's Climate Value-at-Risk (CVaR) tool to estimate the potential financial impacts of climate change on investees.
This robust approach has earned impressive recognition and Meiji Yasuda is the only life insurer in Asia Pacific to be selected as the highest rated "A List" company for two consecutive years – 2023 and 2024 – by CDP, the international environmental NGO.
Equally important for the judges is the company's progress toward a net-zero investment portfolio. It has developed an ESG rating system to evaluate investee companies' efforts on key responsible investment themes, which helps to identify ESG issues and select companies for engagement. Using ESG risk scores provided by Morningstar Sustainalytics, it monitors the ESG risk of its portfolio and promotes dialogue with investee companies to address ESG issues.
Meiji Yasuda's proactive engagement includes encouraging CO₂ reduction efforts, sharing best practices, and proposing KPI setting and monitoring. And the insurer says its portfolio's environmental, social and governance risk scores, and particularly climate risk scores, have significantly improved as a result.
Collaboration continues to be vital in global efforts to tackle climate change, and here again Meiji Yasuda has been leading the way by supporting SMEs to achieve sustainable development goals. This has involved Meiji Yasuda launching an ESG Scoring Service by using an ESG scoring tool developed by a Singapore-based startup, RIMM Sustainability.
After the success of the project's first phase, the provider is now moving to the second phase as it says SMEs are asking the insurer to support and strengthen their ESG initiatives. It is therefore establishing a group of ESG solution providers and introducing some of them to companies seeking to strengthen climate risk mitigation.
Climate resilience is also being built beyond the balance sheet. Through its partnership with Japan's football league and local government on forest conservation, Meiji Yasuda is tapping the power of sport to raise environmental awareness and strengthen community action.
InsuranceERM's award celebrates a climate risk programme that goes further than disclosure and investment screens. Meiji Yasuda is constantly improving its understanding of climate risk; is integrating ESG into investment decisions; and is engaging society at large. It is therefore demonstrating what climate leadership in the insurance sector should look like.