Zurich in the community
Community is at the heart of Zurich’s sustainability strategy.
Through investment from the Z Zurich Foundation and our local offices, we share our resources and expertise to help build more resilient communities, adding value beyond our core business activities to help us create more resilient communities all around Australia and New Zealand.
Zurich’s community strategy focuses on our role as insurer, investor, employer and member of society, bound by our company purpose to ‘create a brighter future together’.
Zurich’s global social impact programs are delivered via the Z Zurich Foundation, a charitable foundation with a registered office in Zurich (Switzerland) established by Zurich Insurance Company Ltd and Zurich Life Insurance Company Ltd in accordance with Swiss law.
The Z Zurich Foundation invests in global, regional and local community programs around the world, focusing on four strategic pillars: climate change, mental wellbeing, social equity, and crisis response. By 2027, the Z Zurich Foundation aims to make a difference to than 25 million vulnerable people.
Zurich Australia & New Zealand supports this global vision through its local programs, explored below, as well as through encouraging a strong employee culture of community activism through volunteering and fundraising.
In the past years, Zurich Australia and New Zealand completed multi-year strategic collaborations with the Raise Foundation, Beyond Empathy, Variety NZ and Mr Perfect. In addition to our current strategic charity partners, we support a wide range of charities through volunteering, fundraising, and other initiatives.
Strategic collaborations
Tackle Your Feelings
Tackle Your Feelings is a free mental health training program for community football players and coaches, committee members, umpires and other club support staff. It has recently been extended to the community netball ecosystem with the program being piloted in New South Wales, with aspirations to extend to other states around Australia.
The program was formed by the AFL Coaches Association, AFL Players’ Association and Zurich Financial Services Australia in 2018.
The program is delivered by a local psychologist and aims to help participants gain the tools to Understand, Recognise and Respond to signs of mental ill-health in their players. There are also more detailed sessions which participants can explore a range of key topics.
The program is led by high profile players and coach ambassadors.
Since its formation, the Tackle Your Feelings program has been delivered to more than 15,000 coaches, committee members, players and umpires across 1250 community AFL clubs through 750 workshops in every Australian state and territory.
The next evolution of the TYF program is to achieve systems-level change by encouraging clubs to develop their own mental health gameplans, with the program to distribute important club resources to assist clubs in this journey. In addition, we hope to extend the program’ the more community netball clubs around Australia.
This campaign has been designed based on the framework of the successful ‘Tackle Your Feelings’ campaign launched in 2017 in Ireland with the support of the Z Zurich Foundation.
Urban Climate Resilience Program
The Urban Climate Resilience Program (UCRP) is a global initiative launched by the
Z Zurich Foundation in 2023. The program aims to build sustainable, resilient communities that can withstand, recover from and thrive in the face of climate related disasters.
The UCRP builds upon the Foundation’s ongoing climate change work with the Zurich Climate Resilience Alliance in largely rural environments and expands into urban spaces. This initiative is a collaboration between the Foundation, local teams from Zurich Insurance and several global charitable organisations.
In Australia, the Urban Climate Resilience Program (UCRP) has partnered with the Australian Red Cross. With the number of extreme heat days in Australia now reaching 34 each year and continuing to grow, the program aims to assess and improve the heat resilience of three areas in Western Sydney: Bankstown, Blacktown, and Penrith, which are particularly vulnerable to heatwaves. Extreme heat presents a serious risk to vulnerable populations.
The key objectives of the program are to support communities within Western Sydney to adapt, prepare and stay safe during Australia’s hottest days.
The program aims to deliver awareness, training and support and minimise the negative effects of heatwaves on vulnerable populations within Western Sydney.
Find out more about the Climate Resilience Alliance
Mitey
Teachers, parents and experts all agree. Mental health education has never been more crucial for our children. Mitey is an evidence based, school wide approach to teaching mental health education which is built around the NZ Curriculum and aligned to the Mental Health Education Guidelines.
Mitey targets NZ children from Years 1-8 to help them build the necessary and age appropriate skills, knowledge and understanding they need to nurture their own emotional wellbeing and those of others. Mitey aligns to the NZ Curriculum and is woven into everyday teaching to spark and stimulate new learning. The reach of Mitey extends school wide from policy to staff wellbeing to community engagement to ensure that the school environment supports the learning and promotes overall wellbeing across the school and community.
Melbourne Football Club
Zurich Australia & New Zealand has been a proud Co-Principal Partner of the Melbourne Football Club since 2018. This sees us partner with one of the AFL’s foundation clubs, with a proud heritage stretching back to 1858. They lay claim to being the oldest professional sporting club – of any code – in the world.
Partnering with Melbourne allows Zurich to play an active role in many important community and charitable programs affiliated with the Club. See more of our strategic collaborations in partnership with MFC here.
Wests Tigers
Zurich Australia is proud to be in partnership with the National Rugby League (NRL) Wests Tigers, including sponsorship of the new state-of-the art training and administrative facility – the ‘Zurich Centre’ – and the Wests Tigers men’s and women’s teams.
Forming part of the new Concord Oval and community sports precinct, the Zurich Centre boasts leading administrative and training facilities including a pool, gym, wrestling room and a physiotherapy space. Zurich will also support the club through a number of community activities focused on diversity and inclusion.
Community activism
At Zurich, we support our employees to be community activists. Activism is a belief in our work and in taking action that makes an impact. It’s about making social impact, which is at the heart of the Z Zurich Foundation’s mission. Impact is a measure of change and change only happens when purposeful action occurs. In Australia and New Zealand, along with all global Zurich business units, we are supporting community activists comprising of our employees, customers, distributors, policy makers and others, all of whom act alongside us to improve the lives of vulnerable people.
The sense of belonging, knowledge and experience employees gain from our community programs helps us shape our products and services, leading to better customer outcomes.
Zurich encourages a vibrant culture of employee giving and volunteering in support of charities and community initiatives that are important to our employees. Zurich’s Employee Resource Groups and special interest clubs drive participation in frequent national fundraising events.Zurich, through the generous support of the Z Zurich Foundation, also offers uncapped dollar matching for employee fundraising efforts and at least one paid volunteer day per year. Since 2018, Zurich Australia has been recognised as one of Good Company’s Top 20 Best Workplaces to Give Back.
Zurich employees participate in regional and global community initiatives via the Z Zurich Foundation, including global community champion forums, volunteer hackathons to help solve hairy challenges for our charity partners, community hero awards, competitions, and fundraising initiatives.Crisis support
The Z Zurich Foundation supports small and significant-scale crises, such as climate-related disasters, providing immediate relief efforts to vulnerable people and responding to their changing needs. Moreover, we wish to bring change to communities by also supporting neglected crises, creating greater impact where it is most needed. It’s our firm belief that prevention is the best form of protection. Before a catastrophe occurs, we aim to help at-risk communities proactively anticipate emergencies to reduce the impact of a disaster.
With the support of the Z Zurich Foundation, Zurich Australia also engages in disaster support and relief in Australia and New Zealand based on local need. This has included substantial support to charities during Covid-19, and support of the 2019/20 bushfire relief efforts.
In November 2020, Zurich Australia & New Zealand, through the Z Zurich Foundation, invested AUD 2.58m to support bushfire and COVID-19 relief efforts to the Australian Red Cross, NSW and QLD Rural Fire Services and Country Fire Authority, as well as contributions to the AFL’s Bushfire Fund. Relief fundraising efforts are supported by Zurich employees in Australia and overseas, their families and friends, our customers, suppliers and local distribution network of brokers and advisers. Other recent relief efforts in 2022 and 2024 have included local and global emergencies such as the NSW and QLD floods, as well as the Pacific Tsunami appeal, the Auckland floods as well as global disasters including the Ukraine war and earthquake in Turkey/Syria.
