The demand for public non-financial information on environmental, social, and governance issues is both maturing and booming. Companies often elect to participate in ESG ratings to showcase their sustainability efforts to their investors and other stakeholders and to improve their performance.

The materiality matrix has become a familiar sight in corporate reporting, representing a selection of topics that generate impact on the company and that are relevant to its stakeholders. Traditionally, full materiality assessments are conducted involving internal and external stakeholders in an elaborate process. But, today’s turbulent business environment requires a more frequent and agile approach, monitoring sustainability risks and opportunities around the clock. Finch & Beak’s Re-Fresh Materiality Assessment guarantees an annual update of your materiality matrix within 4 weeks by using big data from Bloomberg and CDP, among others.

The demand from investors and institutions for ESG information increasingly puts pressure on companies. However, reporting activities often take up much time at the expense of creating real impact. As a European expert we see a lot of value in actively engaging in the leading ESG-benchmarks such as Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) and CDP, but at the same time the struggle that companies have to leverage all the efforts they have put into filling out the (sometimes very demanding) questionnaires.