Our growth strategy and sustainability

Sustainability: integral to our strategy

Our ability to deliver on our strategy – and to continue to create value for our shareholders over the short, medium and long term – is dependent upon our capacity to adapt to an increasingly challenging business environment. While our 94-year history and our strong performance during the recent global financial crisis bears testimony to our resilience, we believe that we are likely to face continuing business turbulence given the context of current economic, social and environmental challenges, and we recognise that we cannot rely on our past performance alone if we are to achieve our vision of being a leader in wealth creation and protection.

The global financial crisis is forcing the financial sector to rethink risk. Governments, seeing the crisis as a form of market failure, are looking to overcome this failure through more regulation of the financial services industry. While we recognise the need for regulation, these measures are significantly increasing the compliance burden that the Sanlam Group faces. A range of societal challenges – such as high unemployment and a low growth environment, persistent income disparity, governance failures, climate change and increased competition for diminishing resources – are contributing to a more challenging operating environment and are increasing stakeholders' expectations on the role of business in responding to these challenges. Through our internationalisation focus and our focus in the lower income market in South Africa, the Sanlam Group is being exposed to a greater number of stakeholders and a more diverse set of interests and expectations.

Achieving and sustaining our growth ambitions requires that we remain particularly responsive to the societal context in which we operate, that we develop and maintain effective relationships with our key stakeholders, and that we adopt a systematic approach to risk management

At Sanlam, we see sustainability as a strategic business imperative that provides the lens through which to view our business and to ensure that we remain responsive to the increasingly interconnected societal challenges and changing expectations of our stakeholders. This shift in our understanding of sustainability is aligned with the move (nationally and globally) towards integrated reporting, a process that seeks to prompt a more informed appreciation by companies of the resources and relationships that impact on our ability to create and sustain value.

We believe that implementing our sustainable development strategy in line with our business strategy will enable us to lower our operational costs, maintain customer loyalty, and attract and retain talented employees. Our Sustainability Management Framework is a realisation of this and will enable us to:

This sustainability report focuses explicitly on our performance in terms of our Sustainability Management Framework. An integrated strategic review of our performance against the Sanlam core strategy is provided in our Integrated Annual Report.