Travelers faces activist push: climate, race & lobbying hit AGM agenda

Property/casualty insurer  Travelers will face a hefty activist agenda at its pending AGM, with shareholder proposals covering the full range of social issues from climate change to lobbying and racial justice.

Five shareholder proposals have hit the 2022 voting agenda for May 25, including two from veteran climate groups, all provoking stiff opposition from management.

Green Century Capital Management and As You Sow will push the climate issues with a pair of resolutions demanding a plan to a Paris-compliant net-zero and greater climate reporting. Shareholder proposals match demands the two groups are making this year at Chubb.

Green Capital calls  Travellers a climate “laggard” with a claim that “the company has made no public commitment to limit its underwriting” to date.

Travelers ballyhooed elements of the climate policy it does have in place, but offered very little by way of hat-tipping to climate needs in arguing its call for a no vote.

Travelers calls the net-zero plan “unwarranted intervention in the company’s existing and effective climate risk mitigation and opportunity strategy” and claims the resolution “inappropriately interferes with strategic decision-making at the heart of the company’s business model.”  Reporting demands are either “duplicative” or “impossible.”

A separate shareholder proposal on improved reporting standards on lobbying efforts also carries indication that lobbying on climate policy may be the underlying core issue.

Racial justice hits the agenda in two shareholder proposals, one to demand an audit of comparative pricing across ethnic lines, another to report on insurance policies for law enforcement and options for amendments that might incentivize reductions in police brutality.

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