OP promotes biodiversity in cooperation with its customers and stakeholders. It aims to be a pioneer, inspiring other actors to take account of biodiversity in their operations. For example, we highlight taking account of forest environments, traditional landscapes and farming, wetlands and water bodies, the Baltic Sea, invasive species prevention, and pollinators. We engage in biodiversity analysis from the climate, water sustainability and circular economy perspectives.
Approved in 2023, our biodiversity roadmap will enable us to create a framework for promoting biodiversity. OP Financial Group aims to create a nature positive handprint by 2030. By ‘nature positive’, we mean that OP’s operations will have a net positive impact (NPI) on nature.
Taking account of biodiversity in business activities requires deep understanding of the subject and extensive development of competencies. Improving the competencies of our employees and customers, understanding regulation, and enhancing our capabilities and systems are essential to the development of OP’s nature-positive work. Biodiversity-related impacts and dependencies can give rise to physical or transition risks. The flip-side of risks is new opportunities, which OP can create for itself and its customers by acting as a pioneer in understanding and harnessing the impacts of biodiversity.
Provision of sustainable finance is a key tool in promoting biodiversity. In terms of sustainable corporate finance, OP aims to increase its financing of nature-positive projects and support corporate customers in their efforts to reduce their negative impacts. Investors have woken up to the risks associated with nature loss, and biodiversity degradation has become a major theme alongside climate change. The insurance sector can influence biodiversity and nature loss mitigation. A concrete way of doing so is to reduce emissions in claims settlements by growing the circular economy’s share of such settlements, since climate change is a key driver of nature loss. Nature-related opportunities can also be used in product and service development, for example by insuring new types of business, and taking account of nature-positive impacts in insurance pricing and claims settlement practices.
In January 2024, OP Financial Group joined the Partnership for Biodiversity Accounting Financials initiative (PBAF) as a partner. PBAF's goal is to develop a common standard for financial institutions for measuring biodiversity.
OP Ryhmä has started a three-year collaboration with WWF, and OP and WWF are working together to promote biodiversity in Finland. The goal of the cooperation is to protect the nearby nature by inspiring people to act for its benefit.
