Vitality model saves more than two million life years for its customers in 2022

Johannesburg - Discovery has released its 2022 Sustainability Report, along with its fully Integrated Reporting Suite, marking 30 years of making people healthier while enhancing and protecting their lives. 2022 was a year of significant progress in the Group’s purpose-led journey, with its shared-value model being more relevant than ever, and a renewed focus on measuring, managing and disclosing its impact. The COVID-19 pandemic reaffirmed the importance of maintaining individual health as well as the power of behaviour change initiatives to save lives.

“Discovery was established to make people healthier and enhance and protect their lives. Moving forward, we’re accelerating our focus on this core purpose as we work to be a force for good for our customers and other stakeholders,” said Discovery Chief Executive, Adrian Gore.

“We take our role in incentivising better health on a global scale seriously. The ESG space is a complex one and rigorous measurement of the societal impact of improved health outcomes is critical. We have used the combination of rich behavioural data, advanced technology and detailed analysis to quantify an impact and are proud to report that we have saved more than two million life years in aggregate for our customers, together with our global partners, through activities measured over the last year,” explained Gore.

Discovery’s head of Investor Relations and ESG, David Danilowitz, commented, “To build on the achievement we have measured this year, we have set a goal of incentivising one billion healthy activities a year by 2030, which we believe will save and improve the quality of millions more lives. To enable this goal, we will continue to create innovative products that benefit society, act on opportunities to build our nation, actively strengthen the healthcare and other societal systems and achieve best-in-class environmental management. Taken together, these actions will ensure that we continue living our purpose and being a powerful force for good.”

In the past financial year, Discovery recorded 470 million healthy activities, and returned R11.4 billion in value to customers through its shared-value model and impacted nearly 40 million lives, in part through further advancing global partnerships with leading insurers.

“We are equally proud of the unquantified, but material impact Discovery Health and the Discovery Foundation has on the lives of millions of South Africans and the broader healthcare system,” added Danilowitz.

This year’s sustainability report details these and other milestones, as well as the key ESG targets the Group continues to work towards, namely:

• Environmental – Restoring the climate and environment: Achieving carbon neutrality in our operations (Scope 1 and 2) by 2025 and net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 or earlier.
• Social – Making people healthier and building the nation: In addition to improving health outcomes globally, we work towards strengthening healthcare and other systems as we help build South Africa through efforts like our COVID-19 vaccination drive, Fire Force and Pothole Patrol.
• Governance – Best-in-class governance with fair and responsible pay supporting a diverse and inclusive workforce: Our people remain our greatest asset and we continue to improve diversity and inclusion with a clear focus on employment targets and fair remuneration.

External verification provides a critical “mirror” to ensure the Group’s efforts and progress are measurable and aligned with the demands of all stakeholders. In the past year excellent progress was made in this respect and it is worth noting the following three key aspects of external recognition:

(1) Discovery achieved top tier ESG ratings across key identified rating agencies and has been recognised for its low carbon footprint and fairness of pay (as shown on page 4 of the Sustainability report);

(2) The Group maintained its level 1 status for Broad-based Black Economic Empowerment as well as a diverse workforce across metrics;

(3) Discovery’s products have been recognised for their innovation around sustainability-related issues, particularly through the Group’s ranking in the top 5 of Fortune’s Change the World list for 2022, recognising the social impact of the Shared-value banking model.

Find our full reporting suite here: https://www.discovery.co.za/portal/corporate/esg-reports