ClimateWise Principles – 2010 report on progress from Legal & General

At Legal & General we recognise that climate change and our approach to mitigation and factoring it into the way we run our business is something that matters to us and to our stakeholders. We were a founding member of the ClimateWise Principles and currently have representatives from both business and support functions sitting on the ClimateWise Management Committee. Since our last update in June 2009 there have been a number of developments within Legal & General on progress against the key aspects of the six ClimateWise principles, which we are disclosing below.

See how we did in 2009 against ClimateWise principles here: http://www.legalandgeneralgroupcsr.com/our_principles/validation_verification.aspx

Business Context and Climate Change

In 2009 we were responsible for six percent more customer policies than in 2008, showing that even during a recession clients trusted our products. With that trust comes responsibility. Success in our business can be simply measured by whether we deliver on our promises to customers, which include:

• To enable customers to save for a pension which will provide them with an income in retirement for life.
• To provide investment and savings products which allow individuals and families to plan for the future.
• To pay out valid claims when a customer becomes ill, is unable to work or dies.
• To pay out valid claims when a customer's home is damaged.

In our general insurance business we have around 1.2 million customers with cover for floods. We have paid out nearly £170m in claims, helping 15,000 customers in difficult circumstances.

The impacts of climate change are important to our business. If affects how we run our businesses. We are one of the biggest investors in UK PLC with around a 4.5% ownership of the FTSE All share; we are also one of the biggest UK Commercial Property Fund Managers and Life assurer’s in the UK. We therefore apply the ClimateWise Principles most prominently in these areas.

You can see more context and scale of our business here: http://www.legalandgeneralgroupcsr.com/our_social_purpose/csr_context.aspx

For further information on ClimateWise and Legal & General’s position on climate change issues please contact Graham Precey, Head of Corporate and Social Responsibility, at graham.precey@landg.com

For the full, 12-page document outlining the six principles and our responses, please download the PDF or see link in top right hand corner of this press release.