Sustainability

Ensuring sustainability remains an important part of our strategy. In 2022, we continued to foster sustainability and responsible behaviour throughout the organisation, and details of that work are provided in this report. We are proud that we were able to make considerable progress, and that we initiated further improvements.

Despite the current economic uncertainty, and thanks to our cautious, long-term risk management approach, our overall loss performance remained robust, and we provided appropriate, tailored solutions to customers who were unable to meet their contractual repayment obligations.

In 2022, Cembra enhanced its approach to assessing its carbon footprint. For the first time, we conducted a full GHG emissions inventory to capture all material scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions from our corporate operations; this included a detailed analysis of emissions from our value chain.

Our risk management includes climate-related risk. Immediate physical climate risks are generally considered to be limited to specific activities, as we are a financial services provider operating exclusively in Switzerland. Climate-related transition risks could gradually materialise in the form of credit risk. We describe how we mitigate these risks in our Risk Management Report.

The Sustainability Committee, which is chaired by the CEO, held five meetings in 2022, in which it oversaw ongoing sustainability initiatives and projects. In addition, the committee confirmed and reviewed the sustainability targets which are designed to drive further improvements. Sustainability targets have been part of the criteria for determining the Management Board’s incentive-based compensation since 2020.

To the extent decisions are not reserved to the Board of Directors, it provides oversight on sustainability-related topics, assisted by the Audit and Risk Committee. For the second time we were seeking external assurance on the most material topics in this Sustainability Report.

Our increasing efforts to promote sustainability were again acknowledged by leading ESG rating agencies. We are very pleased that MSCI ESG Research upgraded us to AAA in 2022, with Cembra ranking first among all listed consumer finance peers worldwide. Moreover, we are one of only eleven Swiss-based companies to join the Bloomberg Gender Equality Index 2023, and we were again certified as "Great Place to Work" in 2023.

Your feedback matters to us, and we would like to continue our dialogue with you on sustainability and on our performance in this area. Please do not hesitate to get in touch with us.