Strategy

Our vision is to build societal resilience by helping vulnerable communities adapt to a changing climate and by improving access to essential healthcare in low-income communities. We aim to make a difference that’s measurable and sustainable, supporting our partners with grant funding and access to the expertise of dedicated Swiss Re employees.

Our focus areas and priorities

To concentrate our efforts and increase our impact, we prioritise two focus areas that encompass our activities in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and at Swiss Re locations:

• Climate solutions

• Access to health

Our strategic commitments

The Swiss Re Foundation’s first ten years allowed us to lay the groundwork for an effective future. With a clear understanding of how we can advance our vision of a more resilient world, we’ve developed a resilience framework, sharpened our thematic scope and improved our understanding of what we can offer our partners to achieve social impact.

The Foundation creates value on three levels:

• Entrepreneurial solutions: We support entrepreneurial solutions in the early, seed and growth stage. We want the solutions we support to grow beyond grant dependence and to scale impact through revenue-based business models. Entrepreneurs for Resilience and Shine are two flagship initiatives supporting enteprises from validation, development (Shine), or growth and expansion (E4R) stages of existence.
• System efficiency: We back initiatives that improve the efficiency of systems for climate resilience and healthcare delivery and demonstrate their value to governments.
• Local charities: We support local charities near Swiss Re locations that promote climate and health resilience and actively engage Swiss Re employees as volunteers.

Our corporate volunteering programmes

An important partner of ours is Swiss Re, our parent organisation, which not only funds the Foundation but also gives us access to the knowledge and networks of Swiss Re employees and clients. Our growing portfolio of employee volunteering opportunities fall into three clusters:

• Lending a hand – hands-on volunteering programmes to support charity partners near Swiss Re locations that address challenges in our focus areas through Community Days.
• Sharing skills – competence-based expert engagement to mentor and support selected partners over a longer period.
• Shine – developing business plan with early-stage social entrepreneurs while also giving Swiss Re experts an opportunity to realise their inner-development goals.

"We collaborate with entrepreneurial changemakers and partners in the public and private sectors to build resilience, favouring initiatives that provide  human-centric, scalable market solutions and create actionable evidence."
Stefan Huber Fux, Head Swiss Re Foundation

Where we are headed

Together with 300 impassioned entrepreneurial changemakers, our community of 4 000+ Swiss Re volunteers and aligned ecosystem partners, in our 2025-2027 strategy cycle we aim to foster the resilience of 2 million people in low-income communities worldwide, especially in LMICs. We’ll achieve this by continuing to de-risk early-stage entrepreneurial solutions and to support solutions that address urgent health and climate challenges. As strengthening our collaborations and taking a more concerted approach will be crucial, we’ll count on Swiss Re expert volunteers, among other collaborators, ever more in our efforts to build a more resilient world.