In an ever changing and sometimes confusing legal world of corporate social responsibility, Kristian Koktvedgaard, from DI and EFRAG, Sustainability Reporting Board Member, Hamza Ijaz, ESG Analyst at  Equity Research in Danske Bank and Erik Eliasson, Head of Responsible Investments at Danske Bank Asset Management gave their views on the value of CSRD reporting and a status on the process of international legal frameworks.

Erik Eliasson: “I think CSRD of course will improve data quality, and this is something which is very evident and to be honest the data that we currently have available is of low quality. There’s a lot of estimations, there’s a lot of differences in how boundaries are defined, what is covered and so on. The data quality will be better and make our job much easier in analyzing the sustainability performance and risks of companies. In addition to that, we’re of course also struggling today in relation to standardization. The fact that, for instance, we as a global asset manager, we’re investing in a lot of different companies in Europe, in Denmark and so on, we need to have some kind of standardization around sustainability. And CSRD is a huge enabler for that.”

Kristian Koktvedgaard on how IR people see the way through the information overload and not drown in CSRD demands:  We do and I also speak from the Confederation side, know this is an extreme burden. The challenge is whether you use materiality appropriately and understand how the standards have been designed in terms of actually using materiality. The expectation is not that you report on everything, but that you identify what is material, and you embed that. That requires tough decisions, it requires a good basis for that materiality assessment, and it definitely requires a good discussion in the boardroom and in the management team saying “this we agreed is actually where we have to mature impact“. Hamza Ijaz on how CSRD data can be relevant for asset managers or analyst: “It increases transparency, increases quality and it improves comparability. That feeds directly into asset managers investment strategies and also third parties. So that should be equity research or ESG rating agencies, so that combined with financial data and sustainability data feeds into the investment decisions of asset managers. And you  have every asset manager have a different combination of strategies implementing ESG. That’s why it has been so unstructured coming to this day, but CSRD should help all of these different strategies, so the work that’s going into this should be able to be translated into something that’s valuable.”

Question 4: What has the impact been on your work in preparation for the CSRD?

It has created more work for me and other departments: 67 percent

It has made it easier to collect data and communicate CSR initiatives and impacts of my business: 17 percent

We are committed to comply with the rules, but I do not believe it will help in showing the impact and/or value of CSR initiatives happening in my company: 17 percent

Link to on-demand streaming of the session