The Future of ESG Reporting

What's your vision in how ESG reporting will evolve over the next decade?

What I think happen is this information has always been important. The strategy of the company, its product, its customer satisfaction, its supplier really, all those things have been important. But now investors, because of the Information Age, know that information is out there, and they want it. I think that the two sides of the reporting, the financial reporting, and the ESG reporting is here to stay. Hopefully over time, for everybody's use, it will become more efficient in that companies will report and limit amount of information likes SASB, and say, what's most material, what's most impactful for their industry?

I also think what's going to happen is that because information is that important to valuation, they will also get third party assurance, just like financial information. As I mentioned, that's already happening at some companies like Salesforce and an Etsy and others.

Ultimately, though, the question then becomes, does all of this reporting spanned as two different types of reports become what we call one single integrated report? There's a group out there called the IIRC, the International Integrated Reporting Council that is espousing that view. If all of this information is important, that's all part of corporate reporting, it should simply be combined, so that Nirvana of this would be that someday maybe there is only one report, with all that information, and then one singular third party attestation on all of that information, both financial, and what some people call nonfinancial. That's where I think it's going in the long term.