Sustainability information.

The Zwitserleven Feeling is inextricably linked to a beautiful world. We all want to have enough income to live on later, but in a world that is worth living in. Zwitserleven believes that the financial sector should take a leading role in achieving this.

We are pleased to tell you more about our sustainable investment policy for your pension scheme. This information is in line with European rules on sustainability disclosures in the financial sector.

Action Plan for Financing Sustainable Growth

The European Commission (EC) presented the European Green Deal in December 2019. This is a series of policy initiatives aimed at making Europe climate neutral by 2050. The EC has drafted an Action Plan for Financing Sustainable Growth. This action plan consists of a large number of rules and regulations applying to most financial institutions. The European rules on sustainability disclosures in the financial sector are part of this action plan.

What is your pension scheme’s degree of ambition?

European rules identify three degrees of ambition for a pension scheme’s sustainability:

• Products that have sustainable investment as their objective
• Products that promote environmental and social (ES) sustainability characteristics
• Products that do not promote sustainability characteristics and do not have sustainable investment as their objective

Investment products that promote ES characteristics

An Athora Netherlands N.V. group company, Zwitserleven applies Athora’s Corporate Social Responsibility policy (see also its Sustainability Framework). In our pension schemes where contributions are invested, an employer chooses which investment forms to make available to participants. The employer can choose from HorizonBeleggen (‘Horizon Investing’), ProfielBeleggen (‘Profile Investing’) or VrijBeleggen (‘Self-Directed Investing’).

• A pension scheme with HorizonBeleggen and ProfielBeleggen promotes ES characteristics. Zwitserleven funds are used. The manager of these funds ensures as much as possible that the funds’ investments meet ES characteristics.
• With VrijBeleggen (if offered under a pension scheme), the participant is responsible for the selection of investment funds. They can choose from the Zwitserleven funds, ASN funds and BlackRock’s iShares. A participant thus decides how much they wish to consider sustainability in their investments.

The Zwitserleven funds in our pension schemes promote the following ecological features:

• Climate change mitigation and adaptation: achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Paris Agreement.
• Protecting and restoring biodiversity and ecosystems: not contributing to deforestation.
• Sustainable use and protection of water resources: achieving water neutrality.
• Pollution prevention and control: not contributing to production involving waste.

The Zwitserleven funds in our pension schemes promote the following social features:

• Promoting good living conditions: contributing to the living conditions of communities.
• Promoting good working conditions: contributing to the well-being of employees and managing social injustice and inequality as much as possible.

The ES characteristics are listed in the sustainability reports. These reports are an appendix to the prospectuses of the Zwitserleven funds. There are also links to the funds in the fund overview below (under the heading ‘Sustainability ambitions per fund’). You can find the Sustainability Information on the fund page under ‘Documents’.

Life cycles to reduce investment risk

HorizonBeleggen and ProfielBeleggen apply life cycles, which are a mix of investments in which the risk is steadily reduced as the standard retirement date approaches. In other words, this asset mix changes over the course of the pension accrual period.
More about investment form HorizonBeleggen

HorizonBeleggen

This figure shows the distribution of investments among the various Zwitserleven funds in HorizonBeleggen during the term with default choice of a fixed pension:

This figure shows the distribution of investments among the various Zwitserleven funds in HorizonBeleggen during the term with standard choice of a variable pension:

Sustainability ambition per fund

The table below also lists the funds along with their sustainability ambition. Each fund’s investments contribute to the sustainability ambition of the pension scheme as a whole. A sustainability report is available for each fund. To what extent those reports apply to a specific participant depends on that participant’s standard retirement date. The funds listed in the table  below link to all information about the specific fund. The sustainability reports are annexed to the prospectuses. You can also find more information on aspects including methodologies, data sources and data processing, and due diligence.

As you can see, for example, 73.1% of contributions are invested in the Zwitserleven Wereld Aandelenfonds until 12 years before your standard retirement date. The Zwitserleven Wereld Aandelenfonds invests predominantly in sustainable index funds as well as in an actively managed, sustainable world equity fund. To gradually reduce investment risks, the investment in the Zwitserleven Wereld Aandelenfonds decreases bit by bit as retirement approaches. Conversely, the share in Zwitserleven Duration funds increases and so does the share in the sustainability ambitions of your pensions’ investments. Investments of the Zwitserleven Duration funds consist mainly of bonds, money market instruments and derivatives. While these highly specific investments promote ES characteristics, they are less suitable for pursuing sustainable investment objectives. The total degree of sustainability may become less as a result.

You can read this in the overview below:

ProfielBeleggen

ProfielBeleggen (‘Profile Investing’) offers five different life cycles to invest in: Conservative, Defensive, Neutral, Ambitious and Offensive.

For the Neutral life cycle, the allocation of Zwitserleven funds is the same as the allocation used for HorizonBeleggen. The other life cycles have a different asset mix.

• Conservative and Defensive start investing earlier in Zwitserleven Duration funds. As a result, the sustainability reports for these funds become relevant for the sustainability ambitions of these life cycles from 18 years or 15 years before the standard retirement date.

  Sustainability ambition of share Conservative Profile

  Investment fund	Percentage Profile Conservative
  Zwitserleven Wereld Aandelenfonds	Until 18 years before the standard retirement date: 73.1%. After that, it will be gradually reduced to 0.0%. The latter percentage may be higher if the participant chooses to prepare for a variable pension income and depends on the extent to which it is chosen.
  Zwitserleven Selectie Fonds	Until 18 years before the standard retirement date: 14.9%. After that, it will be reduced to 0.0%. The latter percentage may be higher if the participant chooses to prepare for a variable pension income and depends on the extent to which it is chosen.
  Zwitserleven Duration funds	Consists of the following funds: Zwitserleven Medium Duration Fonds Zwitserleven Long Duration Fonds Zwitserleven Ultra Long Duration Fonds Until 18 years before the standard retirement date: 0.0%. After that, it will be gradually increased to 88.0% for standard fixed pension. If the participant chooses to prepare for variable pension income, the percentage depends on the extent to which it is chosen.
  Zwitserleven Credits Hypotheken Mixfonds	Until the standard retirement date: 12.0%.

  You can see this in the graph below:

  

  Sustainability ambition of share Defensive Profile

  Investment fund	Percentage Profile Defensive
  Zwitserleven Wereld Aandelenfonds	Until 15 years before the standard retirement date: 73.1%. After that, it will be gradually reduced to 10.9%. The latter percentage may be higher if the participant chooses to prepare for a variable pension income and depends on the extent to which it is chosen.
  Zwitserleven Selectie Fonds	Until 15 years before the standard retirement date: 14.9%. After that, it will be reduced to 4.1%. The latter percentage may be higher if the participant chooses to prepare for a variable pension income and depends on the extent to which it is chosen.
  Zwitserleven Duration funds	Consists of the following funds: Zwitserleven Medium Duration Fonds Zwitserleven Long Duration Fonds Zwitserleven Ultra Long Duration Fonds Until 15 years before the standard retirement date: 0.0%. After that, it will be gradually increased to 73.0%. If the participant chooses to prepare for a variable pension income, the percentage depends on the extent to which it is chosen.
  Zwitserleven Credits Hypotheken Mixfonds	Until the standard retirement date: 12.0%.

  You can see this in the graph below:

  

• For the Ambitious and Offensive life cycles, the investments are changed to investments in the Zwitserleven Duration funds at a later date. As a consequence, the sustainability reports for those funds also become relevant only later (from 10 years and 8 years) for the sustainability ambitions of these life cycles.
  Sustainability ambition of share Ambitious Profile

  Investment fund	Percentage Profile Ambitious
  Zwitserleven Wereld Aandelenfonds	Until 10 years before the standard retirement date: 77.3%. After that, it will be reduced to 26.6%. The latter percentage may be higher if the participant chooses to prepare for a variable pension income and depends on the extent to which it is chosen.
  Zwitserleven Selectie Fonds	Until 10 years before the standard retirement date: 14.7%. After that, it will be reduced to 8.3%. The latter percentage may be higher if the participant chooses to prepare for a variable pension income and depends on the extent to which it is chosen.
  Zwitserleven Duration funds	Consists of the following funds: Zwitserleven Medium Duration Fonds Zwitserleven Long Duration Fonds Zwitserleven Ultra Long Duration Fonds Until 10 years before the standard retirement date: 0.0%. After that, it will be gradually increased to 57.1% for standard fixed pension. If the participant chooses to prepare for a variable pension income, the percentage depends on the extent to which it is chosen.
  Zwitserleven Credits Hypotheken Mixfonds	Until the standard retirement date: 8.0%.

  You can see this in the graph below:

  

  Sustainability ambition of share Offensive Profile

  Investment fund	Percentage Profile Offensive
  Zwitserleven Wereld Aandelenfonds	Until 8 years before the standard retirement date: 80.5%. After that, it will be gradually reduced to 30.1%. The latter percentage may be higher if the participant chooses to prepare for a variable pension income and depends on the extent to which it is chosen.
  Zwitserleven Selectie Fonds	Until 8 years before the standard retirement date: 14.5%. After that, it will be reduced to 9.9%. The latter percentage may be higher if the participant chooses to prepare for a variable pension income and depends on the extent to which it is chosen.
  Zwitserleven Duration funds	Consists of the following funds: Zwitserleven Medium Duration Fonds Zwitserleven Long Duration Fonds Zwitserleven Ultra Long Duration Fonds Until 8 years before the standard retirement date: 0.0%. After that, it will be gradually increased to 55.0% for standard fixed pension. If the participant chooses to prepare for a variable pension income, the percentage depends on the extent to which it is chosen.
  Zwitserleven Credits Hypotheken Mixfonds	Until the standard retirement date: 5.0%.

  You can see this in the graph below: