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.

Finch & Beak's approach to materiality matches the key requirements according to frameworks like the GRI Standards and CSRD, and most importantly: it is geared towards action. Not just for reporting purposes, but providing base materials for both internal and external engagement and advancing your company’s sustainability strategy. Industry-specific emerging issues are incorporated, and the process engages the most important stakeholder groups in your organization while connecting to business strategy and enterprise risk management. The turn-key, independent execution of the project is always adapted to the specific needs to the client, and asks for limited internal resources for facilitation and feedback.

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.