CEO, Codan of Denmark and TryggHansa of Sweden

Rickard Gustafson was born and raised in Stockholm, Sweden. He joined Andersen Consulting in 1989 with a primary focus within the Financial Services and Consumer Products industries.

After 7 years in the consulting business he resigned in 1996 to join GE Capital in Stockholm. During his 10 years with GE, Rickard gained solid experiences from several senior GE Capital leadership positions, both within Europe and the US. In early 2006 he left GE to join the Codan insurance group, where he today serves as group CEO. 

Rickard Gustafson and the other members of the Codan Senior Leadership Team are strongly committed to the company’s corporate responsibility activities and review progress on a quarterly basis to assess whether we are heading in the right direction or whether more resources need to be dedicated to achieving our objectives.  The aim is for Codan to be in a position to address social challenges and to integrate corporate responsibility into our Scandinavian business. Consequently, our strategy is Nordic, and Codan has identified a number of action areas for each of the Nordic countries which all have both a short-term and a long-term impact on our company and our external environment. Every year, Codan prepares a thorough and extensive corporate responsibility report for the Group which sets out clear and ambitious goals for our work. In addition, we have introduced a number of brand beliefs, which contribute to strengthening our culture and corporate responsibility efforts internally.

In terms of environmental performance, it is important for us to lead the way and make an active effort to reduce CO2 emissions. In 2008, we prepared a new climate change strategy to ensure that we take the climate into consideration in all aspects of our work – both in relation to our own processes, our suppliers, partners and customers. Codan has already achieved good results, e.g. in terms of a reduction of air and car travel, which was part of the reason why we managed to reduce our CO2 emissions in 2008 by 1.2 % compared to 2007.

Centre of Excellence for renewable energy Codan has been active in the wind energy insurance market since the beginning of the eighties. As a result, Codan has developed unique competencies which are in high demand both inside and outside our global RSA network. In 2007, RSA appointed Codan Centre of Excellence for the RSA Group’s activities within the field of wind energy.

Green products
Codan and Trygg-Hansa want to focus more on innovative, environmentally friendly and responsible insurance products. Consequently, in 2007, we set the goal to develop and offer at least one new insurance product with an environmentally friendly profile by the end of 2010. We have laid the cornerstones for three new environmentally friendly products with expected launch in 2009.

Together with Applus in Denmark, we provide environmental testing services in 2009 of new customers’ cars. We have entered into cooperation with EnergiMidt which is to provide home owners with the opportunity of controlling their water consumption more easily. We have launched a Swedish concept to make haulage contractors drive smarter in order to avoid accidents and reduce fuel consumption.