The sustainability agenda for 2030 can often feel like a big, distant ambition. But meaningful change rarely happens in one big step. It begins with smaller actions i.e. making everyday choices differently, building awareness, bringing people together and gradually embedding those behaviours into how organisations operate.
For Income Insurance, this journey has evolved from its zero-waste commitment in 2017 into a broader effort to make sustainability part of business decisions, employee capabilities and community action. Their approach reflects a simple but important idea – when individual efforts are connected and sustained collectively, they can create visible, long-term impact.
In this exclusive interview, Shannen Fong, Chief Sustainability Officer at Income Insurance, shares valuable insights into what it takes to move sustainability from an ambition on paper to action on the ground, from making zero waste relatable and engaging employees, to embedding accountability across business functions, using AI responsibly and working with partners to drive wider ecosystem change.
Read the edited excerpts below:
From zero waste ambition to measurable impact and business value
When we first started with zero waste, the idea was to make sustainability relatable and easier for people to understand. The initiative allowed us to translate a broad environmental issue into tangible, everyday actions through the three Rs – Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.
That relatability creates resonance. People can visualise what zero waste means and, importantly, see how they can contribute. Our broader goal is to bring people along on the transition towards a more environmentally positive economy by encouraging tangible action.
Over time, the broader sustainability agenda has also shifted towards proof points, demonstrating tangible actions and measurable outcomes rather than relying only on statements, commitments or pledges. We have consistently anchored efforts in this same spirit, prioritising measurable results from the outset. Our flagship Income Eco Run is a clear proof point of this commitment. When it returned after a hiatus during COVID-19 pandemic, we sharpened its proposition around the theme, “How far would you go for zero waste?”
That question has become a guiding mindset for us, challenging ourselves to consider what more we can do to make our initiatives environmentally responsible, both internally and externally. At the same time, it has to be grounded in practicality.
As we embed sustainability into the business, we need to ensure that it creates business value alongside sustainability outcomes.
From raising awareness to changing everyday behaviour and building a sustainability culture
Sustainability is an ongoing journey for us, and it goes beyond the zero-waste agenda. From the outset, our approach has been anchored in tangible action towards clear targets.
Income Eco Run has had its own journey: in the early years, the focus was largely on education and awareness. As both our campaign maturity and external expectations have evolved, people have developed a greater appetite for turning that awareness into tangible action.
The key is making sustainability relatable. People need to understand what it means for their particular business area and how they can contribute. We therefore translate our sustainability strategy across four stakeholder areas – the planet, customers, our people and the community, and then break this down into specific goals across the enterprise.
Sustainability is not owned solely by the corporate sustainability team. We may hold the mandate, but the outcomes have to be owned by the respective business units. Sustainability goals are embedded in our corporate strategic scorecard, with clear owners, workstreams and leadership sponsors. Because these goals form part of our annual corporate performance scorecard, they also create accountability and are linked to the overall performance and bonus pool.
But the bigger principle is that sustainability cannot be an extra activity alongside the business. It has to be embedded within how the business operates and delivers business value alongside sustainability outcomes.
For example, when we set a target to reduce emissions from our retail motor portfolio, we work closely with the motor business and operations teams. We look at how the portfolio is expected to grow through 2030, the projected mix of internal combustion engine, electric and hybrid vehicles, and what that means for the insurance-associated emissions baseline. Only by aligning the sustainability target with the business trajectory can we establish a realistic reduction pathway.
So the approach has to be structured, collaborative and practical. Everyone needs to understand what sustainability means for their role, own the relevant outcomes and be accountable for delivering them. Ultimately, that is how we move from awareness to action and make sustainability part of everyday business decisions.
AI, sustainability and people strategy: making sustainable behaviours easier
At Income Insurance, we see AI as an enabler across the entire business value chain, not simply as a tool to augment sustainability. Ultimately, it is a means to an end, improving efficiency and productivity while helping our people move up the value chain.
That is why AI sits within our future-ready workforce strategy. In 2025, almost 100% of our workforce completed the required foundational training in data and AI. Beyond the mandated modules, employees can take more specialised and flexible learning based on their roles. The objective is to establish a common baseline so that people understand that we are increasingly a data- and AI-driven organisation and can speak a common language around these technologies to support use cases.
For teams that work more closely with data and AI, the learning goes deeper, with employees working alongside data scientists and specialist functions to apply these capabilities to business decisions.
But adoption cannot happen without responsible use. Strong AI governance is fundamental to ensuring that people use these tools effectively, appropriately and responsibly. Our Chief Data Officer leads this work, and we are also part of an industry working group with the regulator to help shape governance and responsible AI practices for the financial sector.
This is important not only for how our people use AI, but also for maintaining customer trust. As we adopt a relatively new and rapidly evolving technology, customers need confidence that their data and interests remain protected.
So for us, embedding AI is ultimately about three things: enabling productivity, building the capabilities people need to work with AI, and putting the governance and responsible-use principles in place to ensure we use it in a way that builds trust.
Extending sustainability impact beyond the workplace
Our zero-waste advocacy has evolved from education and awareness to becoming an ecosystem enabler. We want to be seen as a zero-waste champion that brings different stakeholders together to support Singapore’s Green Plan and Zero Waste Master Plan 2030.
The Income Eco Run is one way we demonstrate what tangible action can look like at scale. At the 2026 event, we diverted 160% more waste from going to landfills, compared to 2025, through measures such as waste segregation, reuse and recycling. We also use smaller run bibs, around 65% smaller than those at conventional runs, which reduces the amount of material used. The objective is to show people that even a large-scale event can be designed around measurable sustainability outcomes.
We are now taking that approach beyond our own events by working with like-minded partners to drive behavioural change. For example, through our Eco Dabao initiative, which we piloted earlier this year, across our Income Insurance offices as well as in Singapore’s Central Business District (CBD), we are bringing building owners, offices, F&B operators and consumers together to raise awareness and take action in reducing the reliance on single-use plastic food containers and cups. We are also looking at how such circularity models can be extended into communities through partnerships with grassroots organisations.
The next step is to understand what actually drives sustained behavioural change. By collecting data on what works, what does not and which interventions make change more practical, we can strengthen these initiatives and, where possible, contribute insights that can inform policy.
Ultimately, the ambition is to move beyond advocacy to creating an ecosystem where businesses, communities and other stakeholders can collectively reduce waste, increase the effectiveness of the 3Rs (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) and contribute to Singapore’s zero-waste goals.
Our ambition is to complement the wider national sustainability agenda rather than operate in isolation. For example, when we launched the Eco Dabao pilot in the CBD we engaged the National Environment Agency (NEA). Those conversations were important in establishing how our efforts could support broader national priorities.
Ultimately, we want to contribute to the national agenda by helping test ideas on the ground, building evidence and making that learning available to the wider ecosystem.
How HR and business leaders can turn sustainability goals into everyday culture
Firstly, organisations need to understand their sustainability appetite, ambition and level of maturity. At Income Insurance, sustainability and communications have always been separate functions, though both portfolios were previously helmed by one person. As the agenda grew more complex and became more deeply embedded in the business, there was a need to split the two roles and give it greater organisational focus.
But structural change alone is not enough. Sustainability cannot be owned by the corporate sustainability team; the entire business needs to be involved. I see the different functions and business leaders as co-collaborators and, increasingly, co-innovators in developing solutions that work for both the business and sustainability.
That is reflected in how we structure accountability. Sustainability goals sit within the corporate scorecard, with clear owners across functions. For example, HR owns the learning and capability-building agenda, the Chief Investment Officer owns sustainable investment and decarbonising finance emissions, and business teams lead initiatives involving customers.
Corporate sustainability brings these workstreams together, while sponsors across the organisation are accountable for their respective outcomes. Progress is reviewed quarterly at the management and board-level sustainability committee.
This cross-functional model is important because sustainability increasingly intersects with areas such as HR, data, investments, legal and the different business lines. Our work on AI and workforce capability, for example, involves close collaboration between HR and the Data team. Similarly, decarbonising our motor portfolio requires close partnership with the motor business and operations teams.
We are also looking at how we can influence customers. Together with the General Insurance Association (GIA), we are piloting a sustainability-readiness survey among corporate customers to understand where they are in their transition and what support they may need to support their sustainability journey and climate transition. This is particularly important for SMEs, which have varying levels of sustainability maturity and may not have dedicated sustainability resources.
Ultimately, our approach is practical. We cannot pursue sustainability for its own sake. It has to work for the business while delivering meaningful sustainability outcomes. That balance is what makes the agenda sustainable in the long term.