The Allianz Group in Austria has already reorganized its investment strategy in 2014: The main cornerstone of this program was the focus on sustainable investments including voluntary withdrawal from coal mining investments. The preparations and first steps were made between 2012 and 2014. We were the first company to have our total investments of around 7 billion euros audited by the WWF. The result for 2014: 18 percent of Allianz Austria's investments at that time were in the above-average sustainable, green area. The WWF has signed an agreement to gradually improve Allianz Austria's capital investments over a period of five years until the end of 2019 according to strict ecological, social and governance criteria.
The contract between Allianz Austria and WWF Austria has helped us to improve the overall degree of sustainability of our entire portfolio to 88 percent by the end of 2019. Allianz Austria has paid particular attention to the voluntary and permanent withdrawal from coal mining investments. The share of renewable energies in the company's portfolio was doubled from the original 12 percent to 24 percent by the end of 2019.
Our vision is to have only 5 percent of "red area" investments in our portfolio by 2030.
At the end of 2018, 23 percent of the investments were shifted from the unsustainable orange-red area to the above-average sustainable yellow-green area, 42 percent of our assets are currently very sustainable.
The coal phase-out (meaning coal mining companies with 0 percent sales tolerance) from the entire self-assessment has already been successfully implemented in 2015 and has since been adhered to without compromise.
The main challenges for Allianz Austria in 2019 were reduction of the "red portion" of the portfolio to 12 percent and doubling of our share of renewable energies from 12 to 24 percent (only affected the energy portfolio portion of corporate bonds and shares).
The fundamentals for our sustainability policy is a model developed by ESG Plus in cooperation with the WWF and a total of 70 experts from 40 organizations, which reflects their requirements for a sustainable future in the areas of environment, social affairs and economy with practical implementation on the financial markets. A total of more than 150 indicators are used to examine the entire portfolio. 18,000 individual positions of 700 issuers were analysed. With the help of a transparent point system, the most important securities classes could be evaluated: government bonds, corporate bonds, shares and mortgage bonds. These enable investors to make a comprehensive and practicable assessment according to ecological, social and economic criteria.
Allianz Group in Austria together with WWF Austria has submitted the project of sustainable investment - and won the highest award in the category "Best Partnership" at TRIGOS. During the contest, companies were examined by jury experts in different categories in the area of Corporate Social Responsibility.
