As a pioneer in the Saudi Arabian insurance market, Tawuniya recognizes its responsibility to help secure the future of the planet, and remains fully compliant with all environmental regulations in Saudi Arabia.
Resource consumption
Since 2020, Tawuniya has significantly improved its resource consumption and the sentiment towards resource conservation across its rapidly growing team. An ESG-focused corporate culture has been nurtured, supported and strengthened by comprehensive awareness campaigns.
In line with its ESG Strategy, one of the key areas of focus in optimizing resource consumption has been through facility and layout improvements. The Company worked with leading architects to create greener, open office space to promote well-being and collaboration. The number of office plants was doubled, the layout was designed to maximize natural light, while rooms were opened up by limiting walls and barriers.
Tawuniya also invested in an intelligent environmental system across its newly renovated headquarters and Strategic Business Units (SBUs), to monitor, track and evaluate energy and water consumption, while an automatically regulated lighting system contributed towards further reducing the consumption of electricity. Ongoing virtualization efforts at Tawuniya also support the Company’s environmental agenda, contributing towards reducing energy consumption.
The Company also continued to contain its water consumption per employee, despite the increase in number of employees. Tawuniya has over the last few years, successfully maintained a ratio of discharging 90% wastewater while utilizing the remaining 10% for a variety of purposes such as watering plants, cleaning buildings, and washing the Company’s fleet of cars.
Additionally, having predominantly sourced locally to reduce its carbon footprint, Tawuniya plans to integrate ESG requirements into its procurement process to screen suppliers, and update supplier contracts on the same.
Waste management
The vast majority of paper waste generated across Tawuniya offices are recycled, with the revenues generated through such recycling efforts directed towards charitable organizations. The Company has reduced printouts with the end-to-end digitalization of its claims process, and also by centralizing its printing system to track individual consumption and incentivize responsible usage. Furthermore, Tawuniya also made significant progress in reducing paper waste along its value chain by generating digital versions of insurance brochures used for sales activities.
All other general waste is disposed of professionally with the use of hydraulic presses, reducing the number of vehicles needed to transport waste to disposal facilities. Old IT equipment in operating condition, are donated instead of being sent to landfills.
GHG emissions
Tawuniya codified its Company policy on travelling only when required (following the success of the operating model utilized during COVID-19 pandemic), investing in reliable and high-performing virtual meeting infrastructure.
The Company plans to begin analyzing Scope 1 emissions across its main business activities in 2023. These efforts will expand to cover investing and underwriting activities in subsequent years such as insuring solar panels, electric and hybrid vehicles, along with the measuring of Scope 2 and Scope 3 emissions. The Company is currently laying the foundation for this assessment by collecting the relevant data and seeking out experts.
To further contribute to the Kingdom’s net zero journey, Tawuniya has announced plans to build a park next to its headquarters with 200+ trees and 600+ bushes, in line with Vision 2030’s Green Riyadh Initiative that promotes urban greening, and Saudi Green Initiative, which is working towards the rehabilitation of 40 million hectares of degraded land.
Environmental risk
Tawuniya’s Business Continuity Management (BCM) assessment analyses and integrates environmental risks to ensure the Company can continue to serve its clients despite any such uncontrollable incident. The Company is constantly expanding the list of environmental factors to keep pace with changes to the environment, incorporating many key environmental risk factors, including sandstorms, windstorms, heatwaves, fires, floods and flash floods, heavy rains, earthquakes as well as epidemics and pandemics.
The Company is also working to incorporate these environmental risk factors into its financial and operational risk management strategies, with updates on these efforts planned for the coming years.
