Our Goals

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We conduct periodic materiality assessments with the aim of developing sustainability reporting and processes consistent with internal and external stakeholder expectations, understanding our most important sustainability topics, and anticipating and managing future risks and opportunities.

Our Sustainability Strategy

As part of our fiscal year 2023 materiality assessment, we validated the three pillars established in our initial 2020 assessment and added programs under each pillar. Additionally, we continued to evolve our product sustainability strategy, which spans all three pillars and connects to programs in each pillar. We also developed a three-year plan with an external consultant that is enabling us to mature our sustainability program, particularly in the topic areas that our internal and external stakeholders prioritized during our materiality assessment process. Our three-year roadmap includes topic-aligned actions that are designed to support Guidewire’s competitiveness and long-term business prospects.

 

A detailed description of our fiscal year 2023 materiality assessment and matrix can be found here.

Stakeholder Engagement

We engage both internal and external stakeholders in a variety of ways and try to establish a two-way dialogue that integrates ideas back into our programs, products, processes, and policies. We define Guidewire’s stakeholders as those groups that can influence and be influenced by our business products and by our presence.

Our Approach

  • Investors (stockholders and institutional investors): We engage with investors on a broad range of topics,  including trust and integrity, talent management, and the environment through our public disclosures. We also communicate more directly through earning calls, one-on-one conversations with portfolio managers and investment stewardship teams, and the annual stockholder meeting. Additionally, we maintain a robust stockholder outreach program, regularly reaching out to our largest institutional stockholders and key investors to discuss executive compensation, corporate governance, and other priorities, and to gather feedback to better understand their perspectives. 1
  • Customers (P&C insurers): We engage with customers on various material topic areas, including product sustainability, emissions and energy, inclusion, security and data privacy, human rights, governance and ethics, and Guidewire Gives Back (“GGB”) initiatives and programs. The engagements occur in direct conversations and responses to requests for proposals, along with providing information to sustainability rating agencies like Ecovadis and the CDP Corporate Questionnaire. We also engage through conferences, customer roundtables, and executive forums. In 2023, we launched a Sustainability Business Advisory Council for our customers.
  • Employees: Our business requires attracting, developing, and retaining a motivated team of individuals who thrive in a culture based on integrity, rationality, and collegiality. We engage with our employees through our Employee Resource Groups (“ERGs”), manager one-on-ones, slack channels, our employee intranet, annual employee pulse surveys, department and company meetings, individual and team performance management and goal tracking system, and Vision, Principles, Methods, Obstacles, Measures annual goal setting process.
  • Communities and Nonprofits: We engage with communities and nonprofits through our product sustainability, inclusion, emissions and energy, and GGB initiatives and programs. The latter includes corporate strategic giving, GGB matching gifts, product donations, skilled volunteer opportunities, volunteer time off, and signature initiatives. We also connect through in-person meetings, conference calls, and events. We also strategically partner with nonprofit industry associations and think tanks, such as the World Economic Forum, on the topics of security and data privacy and building climate resilience.
  • Government entities: We engage with government and regulatory bodies in the countries in which we operate through industry associations and public policy forums. Topics we engage on include security and data privacy and product sustainability. We comply with all applicable regulations and laws, and where possible, aim to implement policies and processes ahead of legislation. We currently are not a politically active organization, and we do not contribute to political campaigns or participate in direct lobbying efforts.
  • Suppliers, Vendors, and Business Partners: We engage with suppliers, vendors, and business partners on our business strategy and topic areas such as governance, ethics and emissions and energy, as well as labor and human rights through requests for proposals, our supplier sustainability survey, our vendor management portal, in-person meetings, calls, and conferences.