While having a fountain of youth remains an elusive dream, the pursuit of sustainability is within everyone's reach.
For 111 years, InLife has shown that sustainability is possible. And the secret to being “ageless” is simple: staying relevant to the needs and dreams of Filipinos and being attuned to the call of the times so it can continue to provide a lifetime of good.
With its corporate longevity, InLife has plenty of lessons to share in addressing some of the biggest sustainability challenges the country faces such as climate change. In applying our experience in financial protection, savings, investments and retirement, we do our part in protecting the environment, uplifting society, and responding to evolving needs of Filipinos.
Here are some of the ways we continue to lead a “woke” life — relevant, aware, and enlightened — even at 111.
We walk the talk when it comes to our environmental impact. We closely monitor the carbon footprint of our owned buildings (Insular Healthcare, Insular Life Corporate Center, and Insular Life Makati)
To cut down on our paper consumption and materials used to reduce the waste we produce, we have been shifting to digital and paperless processes, such as:
Taking on planetwide problems like climate change demands global solutions. Still, we continue to play our part, especially as InLife operates in the Philippines, a country that ranks as one of the world’s most vulnerable to climate risks. In 2021, our corporate social responsibility arm, Insular Life Foundation, joined hands with the local government of Lubao, Pampanga, and the Philippine Bamboo Foundation to kickstart the Kawayanihan Bamboo Project, adopting 1.8 hectares of riverbanks for bamboo tree planting in a six-hectare ecopark.
We also entered into a three-year partnership with the Philippine Eagle Foundation for its “Saving the Bird King at Leyte and Samal Islands.” We also conducted intensified information campaigns in these areas through film showings of “Bird of Prey,” alongside working with locals to train them as forest guards and take care of their key biodiversity areas.
To empower Filipinos in managing their personal finances, we offered free resources on life and health insurance, education, retirement and estate planning, and investments.
We launched the Youtube channel InLife “Wealth University” to provide free materials that seek to answer some of the most asked questions about money: how to save, how to diversify investments and how to plan and manage one’s retirement.
And to help develop high potential young Filipinos to become successful in the business, we created InLife Alpha. This management development program hopes to produce respected financial advisors on a fast-tract progression towards becoming a Million Dollar Round Table members and top agency leaders.
InLife would not have made it this long by minding its bottomline alone. For InLife, sustainability means, not just insuring, but ensuring the future of the next generation of Filipinos. For more than five decades now, InLife Foundation has been making a multi-pronged investment in the Filipino youth’s future through educational scholarship grants and financial literacy. The longstanding Insular Life Golden Eagle Award continues to provide college scholarship benefits to poor but deserving students in six state universities.
Other education-focused initiatives include an alternative learning system for out-of-school youth; the Lingap Eskwela sa Pandemya for
water access, sanitation, and hygiene; Adopt-a-Scholar Program in cooperation with InLife employees; Brigada Eskwela Program, a cash assistance for Luzon-based schools; and donation of Insular storybooks.
We also embody the Filipino trait of malasakit sa kapwa through our humanitarian response during disasters and the pandemic, providing cash or donations to severely affected communities and municipalities as well as to hospitals and several medical associations. We also delivered free insurance cover to 550 health frontliners and 110,000 eligible workers providing essential goods and services.
As much as we take on societal problems, we also look after our own people, the heart of the organization. We value workforce diversity on all fronts as it promotes innovation, inclusive growth, and collaboration. In putting a premium on employee health, safety, and wellness, we sustain programs that address mental health, physical fitness, workplace wellness, environmental stewardship, and COVID-19.
During the pandemic, we established point-to-point shuttle service covering multiple cities, disaster recovery exercises to prepare the
workforce for emergencies, and a solid work-from-home program during the community quarantines, coupled with flexible work arrangements. The pandemic lockdowns did not stop us from investing in our employees’ learning and development. We spent over Php2.78 million on employee training and development, averaging 18 hours in training for all staff.
These are just some of the ways we fulfill our economic, environmental, and social responsibilities.
