Inclusion and Equal Opportunities at Allianz

Our Approach

Allianz has built our Inclusion and Equal Opportunities strategy on our three pillars – Employees, Customers and Stakeholder Trust and which encompasses six key dimensions. Our strategy is a fundamental part of company culture and people first values.

We celebrate and champion all aspects of Inclusion & Equal Opportunities; in the hopes of creating real positive change in the wider community, as well as for our employees. However, in this article we focus on two main aspects of Inclusion & Equal Opportunities with our primary focus on our Gender and Disability initiatives.  We are proud finalists in the National D&I Awards categories of Advancing Gender Inclusion and Advancing Disability Inclusion.

Our Gender Initiatives 

Allianz is committed to gender equality, meaning equal opportunities for all genders.

As a founding signatory of the Women in Finance Charter we are committed to improve gender balance and inclusion in the workforce. By publicly committing to targets we demonstrate that equality is at the centre of everything we do. 

We are extremely proud  of our partnership with Women’s Aid and are a leading voice in taking a stance on the prevalent issue of domestic violence in Irish society. From 2021, we have partnered with Women’s Aid, Ireland’s national charity working to stop domestic abuse against women and children. Among the initiatives we have sponsored and developed are the Dead Flower Shop, The World’s Strongest Women Campaign and two national days of action.

In 2024, we began our partnership with The Shona Project, which it is a non-profit organisation that strives to create a support system for Irish girls as they navigate their way through their teenage years. As part of our partnership to support young women we facilitated the launch of the Shona Project’s mentorship programme, pairing professional female mentors with adolescent girls around Ireland; including some of our own colleagues. This partnership resonates deeply as we make a real and tangible societal impact by setting up the next generation of you women for success in the Financial Services industry.

We are recognised as one of Ireland’s Best Workplaces for Women in 2024 & 2025 by Great Place to Work Ireland. We are one of only 35 companies in Ireland to have achieved this certification. This is further testament of our commitment gender equity. We believe gender should have no impact on opportunities, remuneration or advancement, and we strive for a balanced gender representation at all company levels. 

Here in Allianz Ireland, we closed the Pay Gap in 2021 and together with employee representatives have all measures in place that it stays closed in future. This means there is no pay gap between women and men performing the same or similar work. It goes in line with our open and transparent reward system which is based on merit.

As a result, we received EDGE certification (Economic Dividends for Gender Equality) in 2021 and were recertified in 2023 are undertaking the recertification process once again in 2025. This international certification helps us to measure, monitor and understand our progress in gender equality.  

Our Disability Initiatives

Allianz is a worldwide Olympic and Paralympic insurance partner. Allianz Ireland announced Paris 2024 Paralympic bronze medallist Orla Comerford as our new Allianz brand ambassador.

We also believe in a diverse and inclusive workforce and are proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We encourage our employees to bring their whole selves to work. One of our objectives is to widen access to mainstream employment for graduates with disabilities while supporting and building a more inclusive workplace. 

We are proud to hold an established partnership with Ahead, an independent non-profit organisation working to create inclusive environments in education and employment for people with disabilities. Through the WAM (Willing Able Mentoring) programme we recruit graduates each year, providing them with an opportunity to gain practical work experience. The programme has proven to be an overwhelming success for our graduates. We employ multiple graduates who are working within the business that were hired through the programme.  We have been awarded a WAM Leader Award for the last four consecutive years. 

By working closely with some of our partners and groups like As I Am, Mental Health First Ireland and AHEAD, we want to shine a light on and increase understanding and empathy for living with visible and invisible disabilities.

We also have a collaborative partnership with As I Am as part of their Communities in Practice. As part of our journey to become an autism and Neurodiverse friendly employer, our people leaders and employees have undertaken Autism Awareness training workshops and we have completed a sensory audit of our workplace. We have also recently opened a sensory room on-site.

In Allianz Ireland we are committed to creating a work environment that prioritises our employee’s health and wellbeing. Our commitment to sustainable Health & Wellbeing saw the further development and focus on Mental Health.  Allianz Ireland now proudly has 33 Mental Health First Aiders, all of whom are fully accredited by Mental Health First Aid Ireland. They play a crucial role in promoting mental wellbeing and providing initial support to colleagues facing challenges.. 

We continuously strive to improve and be more inclusive and equitable by benchmarking ourselves against the best internally within the Allianz Group and externally. At every step we continue to review our ambition, and have set external benchmarks of achievement to validate our approach.  In 2024 we were awarded Investors in Diversity Silver Accreditation by the Irish Centre of Diversity, Ireland’s premier EDI mark.

Conclusion

Allianz has been working hard to secure people’s lives and give courage to people for what’s ahead. Our purpose, ‘We secure your future’ is a constant reminder that we strive to do it right – with passion, every day, because we know how important it is to have a fair partner at your side who provides solid and sustainable solutions. 

We recognise joining a new company can be difficult, irrespective of gender, disability, race. Our Inclusion & Equal Opportunities strategy ensures equal opportunities throughout the entire employee lifecycle – from talent attraction and onboarding to learning and development or transition into retirement.