A first of its kind Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) accreditation scheme launched in May 2021 for captives, ILS and other insurance vehicles domiciled in Guernsey is already attracting new insurance business to the island.

The accreditation, enacted by the Guernsey International Insurance Association (GIIA) in conjunction with ESI Monitor, is accessible to anyone with membership to the GIIA.

The accreditation’s purpose is to help organisations manage ESG risks and deliver positive ESG impact throughout their business.

The GIIA’s further ethos behind the framework is to signal to entities coming into Guernsey that the domicile has a coherent set of standards for the implementation of positive ESG values by which to measure their ESG progress on the basis of four key pillars: governance, risk underwritten, investments, and reporting.

“Overall, the framework is an easy tool to help organisations drive ESG discussions at the board level,” said Mark Elliott, chairman of the Guernsey International Insurance Association.

The GIIA view the accreditation and its implementation as especially timely due to increased interest levels around ESG policies and the recent addition of a regulatory stipulation from Guernsey’s regulators.

“When you’re selecting a domicile for your captive or an outsourced provider, ESG is now part of that decision-making process in many respects,’ said Elliott. “This framework is really well timed, because we introduced it and subsequently the regulators added in a regulatory requirement that climate change be considered at the board level.”

“This isn’t just a Guernsey-specific development,” Elliott added. “We’re going to see ESG considerations coming onto the radar throughout all the domiciles in the captive space, and we feel proud to be first movers on this direction of travel and we’re helping clients get comfortable with this from a regulatory perspective, but much more importantly, from an actual ESG perspective.”