The JUST 100 recognizes American corporate leadership on business issues prioritized by the public
ATLANTA, February 5, 2024 - Assurant (NYSE:AIZ), a leading global business services company that supports, protects, and connects major consumer purchases, proudly announced that it was named one of America’s Most JUST Companies, recognizing its commitment to serving its workers, customers, communities, the environment, and shareholders.
JUST Capital, along with CNBC, today released its annual JUST 100 list as part of its 2024 Rankings of America’s Most JUST Companies. The Rankings measure how the nation’s largest corporations are performing on the business issues that matter most to Americans. The issues – which include paying a fair, living wage; supporting workforce retention, advancement, and training; offering valuable products and services while protecting customer privacy; use of sustainable materials, and more – are defined annually by an extensive nationwide polling process conducted on a fully representative basis. The top 100 companies – the JUST 100 – are determined by scoring performance across the full range of criteria and comparing companies head-to-head.
“Being recognized by JUST Capital as one of America’s Most JUST Companies demonstrates our commitment to serve our customers with passion and purpose, strengthen the communities where we live and work, and invest in reducing our impact on the environment while helping our client partners to do the same,” said Assurant President and CEO Keith Demmings. “Our success is grounded in our values and commitments to building a more sustainable business for all stakeholders.”
JUST Capital is an independent nonprofit that demonstrates how just business – defined by the priorities of the public – is better business. JUST Capital has found companies that prioritize all their stakeholders not only don’t suffer consequences for investments beyond short-term profit maximization, they even tend to outperform their peers.
Compared to their Russell 1000 peers, companies in the JUST 100 on average:
- Pay 11.8 percentage points more of their workers a family sustaining living wage (78.3%).
- Provide 7.2 more hours of career development training per employee.
- Offer 2 more weeks of paid parental leave for both primary caregivers and secondary caregivers.
- Intake 99% less water per revenue dollar.
- Emit 42% less metric tons of CO2 per revenue dollar.
- Use 29.6 percentage points more renewable energy as a proportion of their total energy use.
- Have a 4% higher profit margin, 2.9% higher return on equity, and 1.2% higher dividend yield.
“American capitalism has to work for more Americans. For this to happen, the private sector, and especially big corporations, must take the lead in creating value for all their stakeholders,” said JUST Capital CEO Martin Whittaker. “That’s exactly what the JUST 100 are doing. They show that just business is better business.”
For the annual Rankings, JUST Capital collects and analyzes corporate data to evaluate the 1,000 largest public U.S. companies across 20 Issues identified through comprehensive, ongoing public opinion research on Americans’ attitudes toward responsible corporate behavior. JUST Capital has engaged more than 170,000 participants, on a fully representative basis, since 2015.
CNBC will delve into the data, highlighting company-specific results and showcasing key stakeholder performance stories about this year’s JUST 100 leaders across the network’s broadcast and digital platforms at cnbc.com/just100. An exploration of the JUST 100 companies can be found at justcapital.com/rankings.
More information about Assurant’s commitment to building a more sustainable business for all stakeholders can be found in its 2023 Sustainability Report.
About the Methodology
Since 2015, JUST Capital has surveyed more than 170,000 Americans on what Issues they believe U.S. companies should prioritize when it comes to just business behavior. Those Issues become the foundation by which we track, analyze, and incentivize corporate behavior change, including the Rankings of America’s Most JUST Companies. JUST evaluated 937 companies across 5 stakeholders, 20 Issues, and 236 raw data points to produce the 2024 Rankings, featuring the JUST 100 and Industry Leader lists.
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About Assurant
Assurant, Inc. (NYSE: AIZ) is a leading global business services company that supports, protects, and connects major consumer purchases. A Fortune 500 company with a presence in 21 countries, Assurant supports the advancement of the connected world by partnering with the world’s leading brands to develop innovative solutions and to deliver an enhanced customer experience through mobile device solutions, extended service contracts, vehicle protection services, renters’ insurance, lender-placed insurance products and other specialty products.
Learn more at assurant.com.
About JUST Capital
The mission of JUST Capital, an independent nonprofit, is to demonstrate how just business – defined by the priorities of the public – is better business. Our goal is to help companies create value for all their stakeholders – their workers, customers, communities, the environment, and shareholders – by focusing on the issues that matter most to Americans. To date, we’ve polled more than 170,000 Americans on the issues they believe companies should prioritize when it comes to just business behavior, and those insights guide our work. We believe that business and markets can and must be a force for the greater good and that by shifting the resources of the $21.6 trillion private sector, we can drive competition to build a better future for all. Our research, rankings, indexes, initiatives, and new offerings like the JUST Jobs Scorecard help track, analyze, incentivize, and scale corporate stakeholder performance. JUST Capital publishes the annual list of America’s Most JUST Companies, the JUST 100, in partnership with CNBC. To learn more, visit: www.JUSTCapital.com.
About CNBC
CNBC is the recognized world leader in business news, providing real-time financial market coverage and business content consumed by more than half a billion people per month across all platforms. The network's 15 live hours a day of news programming in North America (weekdays from 5:00 a.m. - 8:00 p.m. ET) is produced at CNBC's global headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., and includes reports from CNBC News bureaus worldwide. CNBC at night features a mix of reality programming, CNBC's highly successful series produced exclusively for CNBC and a number of distinctive in-house documentaries.
CNBC also offers content through its vast portfolio of digital products such as: CNBC.com, which provides financial market news and information to CNBC’s investor audience; CNBC Make It, a digital destination focused on making you smarter about how you earn, save and spend your money; CNBC PRO, a premium service that provides in-depth access to Wall Street; a suite of CNBC mobile apps for iOS and Android devices; Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and Apple Siri voice interfaces; and streaming services including Apple TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Android TV and Samsung Smart TVs. To learn more, visit https://www.cnbc.com/digital-products/.
Members of the media can receive more information about CNBC and its programming on the NBCUniversal Media Village Web site at http://www.nbcumv.com/programming/cnbc. For more information about NBCUniversal, please visit http://www.NBCUniversal.com.
Assurant Media Contact:
Stacie Sherer
Vice President, Corporate Communications
917.420.0980
Stacie.Sherer@assurant.com