Australian Unity named in inaugural AFR sustainability leaders list

08 July 2022

Tags: Media

Australian Unity has been recognised as one of the Australian Financial Review’s (AFR) Sustainability Leaders for 2022 and has been awarded the ESG Metrics Innovator Award for best innovation focused on improving how environmental, social and governance (ESG) impacts are measured.

The inaugural AFR Sustainability Leaders list, presented in association with BCG, sets out to celebrate the Australasian companies that are making real progress in tackling sustainability challenges—and delivering business value along the way.

Chief Financial Officer and Group Executive for Finance and Strategy Darren Mann said to be recognised as a leader in sustainability and to receive an award for our Community & Social Value (CSV) Framework is acknowledgement and recognition for a lot of hard work and effort by the Group to establish a way to measure and to target investment in products, services and initiatives that deliver positive impact to customers, members and the community.

“As a mutual organisation, originally established to fulfil societal and economic needs for members and the community—delivering positive ESG and social impact is a natural fit for describing and driving what we do and have done for over 180 years,” Mr Mann said.

“Though there is much growth in public scrutiny and expectations of companies when it comes to sustainability and social impact, there are limited ways for companies to measure and report how they are performing in this space.”

“CSV has been a part of the Australian Unity vernacular internally for many years, well before any external focus on ESG commenced.  Being able to author and articulate our contribution through our CSV framework has been extremely important to enable us to ‘put our money where our mouth is’ and to both demonstrate the value of our social impact and to identify and drive further impact growth opportunities.”

Developed in consultation with Social Ventures Australia (SVA), a leading social impact consulting practice, the CSV Framework measures the societal impact and value through the entirety of Australian Unity’s health, wealth and care portfolio—comprising 12 business units with over 60 products and services.

In 2021, the CSV Framework identified $1.25 billion in value was delivered by Australian Unity across three broad impact areas:

  • Lifelong wellness—creating access to better levels of health and wellness ($599 million)
  • Economic empowerment—building financial security and resilience ($203 million)
  • Strong communities—providing meaningful engagement, access to services and social connectedness ($453 million)

Read more about Australian Unity’s award-winning CSV Framework in the Our Impact 2021 report.

ENDS

Media contact:
T: 1300 408 776
E: media@australianunity.com.au

About Australian Unity
Established in 1840, Australian Unity is a member-owned wellbeing company with 260,000 members and more than 700,000 customers. Our range of health, wealth and care products and services provides member, customer and community value that is supportive of personal and community wellbeing. www.australianunity.com.au

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