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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 activity to help us create a brighter future together.

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 three strategic pillars: adapting to climate change, improving mental wellbeing and enabling social equity. By 2024, it aims to create transformative change in the lives of more than one million vulnerable people and positively impact the lives of 11 million others.

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. 

Strategic collaborations

Tackle Your Feelings

In 2019, Zurich and the Z Zurich Foundation launched Tackle Your Feelings, a five-year national program delivering mental health training at community AFL clubs across Australia. The program supports the wellbeing of community coaches and provides them with the tools to understand, recognise and manage the signs of mental health among their players, fellow club members and their extended community and families. The initiative is a partnership with the AFL Coaches Association and the AFL Players Association. The program aims to train 10,000 coaches and committee members at 1,000 clubs around the country, which will support more than 100,000 young people and their families.

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.

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The Raise Foundation

Since 2016, Zurich and the Z Zurich Foundation have collaborated with the Raise Foundation, a registered Australian charity committed to youth wellbeing and engagement through early intervention mentoring programs in high schools. The program offers early intervention, evidence-based mentoring for young people in high schools with trained and trusted independent adults.  The program’s aspiration is to create thriving communities by delivering mentoring programs right across Australia, prioritising younger students in public secondary schools who are most at risk of disengagement or poor wellbeing.

Zurich’s support has helped Raise expand its programs beyond NSW to become a national charity in 2018. In 2020, Zurich and the Z Zurich Foundation renewed the collaboration for a further five years to help Raise with its ambitious goal to offer its mentoring program in every Australian public high school. Each year, Zurich employees engage as mentors in the program.

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Beyond Empathy

In late 2017, Zurich, through another local grant funded by the Z Zurich Foundation, began its collaboration with Beyond Empathy (BE), an organisation that uses the arts to influence change and enrich the lives of individuals and communities facing recurring hardship. Many of BE’s community arts and cultural development workers are from the First Nations communities in which they work. They teach new skills to build confidence and a sense of purpose for young people and encourage them to achieve personal and artistic outcomes. In 2019, our collaboration Excursions delivered a large-scale public art exhibition at the building site of Zurich Tower in North Sydney. Our second collaboration, Parting, involving young people in the Illawarra region was completed in 2022. Beyond Empathy remains an organisation close to our hearts, and you will see regular offerings of skilled volunteering and online performances across Zurich.  

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Mr Perfect

Zurich Australia has been a proud sponsor of the mental health charity Mr Perfect since 2018. Mr Perfect provides conversation and connection for men through informal gatherings across the country.  Zurich has supported Mr Perfect’s expansion to more than 40 locations around the country. The funding has also enabled Mr Perfect to scale up its online offering.  Our employees enjoy Mr Perfect BBQs held at Zurich and volunteering for the community BBQs.

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Melbourne Football Club

Zurich Australia & New Zealand has been a proud Co-Principal Partner of the Melbourne Football Club since 2018, and we extended our partnership to include the Dee’s AFLW team in 2020.

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.

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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 women’s team.

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.

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Mitey

In 2022, the Z Zurich Foundation has pledged a two-year grant to improve the mental health and wellbeing of New Zealand’s primary and high school students through an education approach called ‘Mitey’. This local grant program is run in collaboration with the Sir John Kirwan Foundation and Zurich New Zealand.

Mitey takes a school-wide approach to mental health education, bringing teachers, students and communities together around a common goal – mentally thriving children. The program is being rolled out to schools in Auckland and is set to go nationwide, reaching thousands of students and positively impacting the lives of tens of thousands of people, including teachers, students and their families.

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Variety NZ – the Children’s Charity

In New Zealand, Zurich has partnered with ‘Variety – The Children’s Charity’.

Variety is an organisation committed to levelling the playing field for disadvantaged Kiwi kids. Every year Variety helps over 10,000 local children meet their health and education needs providing them with brighter futures.

Variety funds a broad range of requirements, from much-needed medical equipment, to life-changing mobility needs, to innovative educational initiatives.

The partnership sees Zurich host a variety of fund-raisers and also provides staff with multiple volunteering opportunities to pro-actively assist Variety in their work. Working bees at schools, the Bikes for Kids Programme and volunteering at the annual Monster Book Fair are some examples. Upon the completion of our formal partnership with Variety NZ, our NZ office remains closely engaged through regular volunteer days with Variety.  

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A culture of 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 supporting the Foundation, 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 work 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.

Disaster support

Zurich, through the Z Zurich Foundation, is involved in disaster preparedness and support in multiple ways. Working with the Z Zurich Foundation, we strive to secure lives and livelihoods through disaster support and relief efforts. Through the Z Zurich Foundation, Zurich globally contributes to community disaster preparedness and relief, most notably through the Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance, a multi-sector cooperation which focuses on finding practical ways to help communities in developed and developing countries strengthen their resilience to flood risk.

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. In November 2020, Zurich Australia & New Zealand, through the Z Zurich Foundation, invested AUD 2.58m to support bushfire and COVID-19 relief efforts.

Our bushfire relief fundraising efforts saw ~AUD 1m donated to the Australian Red Cross, the NSW and QLD Rural Fire Services, and Country Fire Authority, as well as contributions to the AFL’s Bushfire Fund. This fundraising was supported by Zurich employees in Australia and overseas, their families and friends, our customers, suppliers and local distribution network of brokers and advisers.

In the wake of the initial wave of COVID-19 in 2020, AUD 1.58m was donated to help local Australian and New Zealand communities. This funding was allocated by the Z Zurich Foundation, which pledged to support COVID-19 relief in every region in which Zurich operates around the world. Emergency financial support was allocated to 23 different organisations associated with mental and physical wellness, homeless support, food security, and domestic violence. The largest donation was made to Foodbank Australia to source and distribute essential food and grocery items to around 2,400 charities around Australia to cater for a spike in demand during the pandemic.

In 2021, Zurich and the Z Zurich Foundation also supported the Centre for Social Impact (CSI) to undertake research into mental health and wellbeing in a post-COVID environment and uncover unmet needs in potential in the mental health sector with opportunities particularly for early intervention and prevention services in the youth mental wellbeing space. Responding to reports of increased domestic violence in Australia in the face of the pandemic, Zurich Australia also supported Our Watch to reach and engage with those undertaking work to prevent violence against women across Australia through online education and skills building programs.

Throughout 2022 and 2023 Zurich Australia has continued to respond to local and global emergencies including 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.

Image courtesy of Foodbank

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