An insurance company is celebrating an unusual milestone this year: giving away GBP1m of its income to environmental projects. It’s one of a growing number of businesses diverting revenues to progressive causes.

By its very nature, insurance is designed to protect customers against future risk. So, why do so many providers prop up the very fossil fuel industries that are going to cause us and the planet so much harm?

This is the question that inspired Matt Criddle to launch Naturesave Insurance, Britain’s greenest insurance provider, which has just reached an unusual milestone: giving away GBP1m of its income.

Each year, Naturesave takes 10 per cent of the income it receives from its home and travel premiums, and puts it in a connected charity, the Naturesave Trust. The trust hit the GBP1m milestone earlier this year, some 25 years after it was founded – no small feat for a business that employs only 12 people.

That sum equates to 13 per cent of Naturesave’s total trading income since it was founded. Through the trust, it has been donated to grassroots environmental projects across the UK via grants of between GBP500 and GBP5,000 apiece. They have funded bike repairs in HM Prisons, community agriculture projects, repair cafes and many more schemes that benefit people and planet.

“The trust primarily funds quite small but interesting projects, such as community orchards, that often struggle to attract funding from the bigger funding bodies,” explains Criddle. “At the moment we are supporting a solar beehive project.”

Spread across six sites in the south of England, the project features thermo-solar beehives that use the power of the sun to eradicate varroa mites, which kill bees, without harming the pollinators themselves.

When Naturesave Insurance was established in 1993, giving away part of a firm’s income or profits was considered radical – especially the notion that small businesses might choose to do so. It remains rare to give away such a high proportion, although there is a global trend towards companies becoming more philanthropic.

In the US, for example, philanthropic enterprise programmes are springing up to help firms give away profits in a sustainable way.

So, what motivated Naturesave to go down this route? Criddle is a lifelong environmentalist, and an entrepreneur. “I wanted to put right some of the wrongs I saw in the insurance industry and build something that was both ethical and sustainable,” he tells Positive News.

The “wrongs” include the fact that the insurance industry is the second biggest investor in fossil fuels after banks, and also underwrites and insures all new coalmines, and oil and gas exploration projects. “All that stuff we should no longer be doing can only happen with insurance. If every company refused to underwrite coalmines, then they would cease to open any new ones,” Criddle notes.

The decision to give away so much has helped to shape the business, he explains. “First of all, it attracts staff who share a sense that they are doing something with meaning, so you end up with people in the organisation who actually care. The same thing happens with our partners: our business and customer relationships are stronger. Our approach has attracted an altruistic and ethically driven client base who are extremely loyal.”

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Written by: Nicola Slawson
Image: The Project Twins
Publication date: April 14, 2021

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