Each year, ACSI conducts a detailed assessment of ESG reporting by ASX200 companies, covering a broad range of financially material ESG risks and opportunities. The assessment gauges how well companies identify, monitor, and manage ESG issues.
ACSI uses all publicly available sources for ESG disclosures, including annual reports, ASX announcements, and sustainability and other standalone corporate reports, to identify ESG reporting leaders and laggards. This year’s benchmarking is based on information publicly disclosed in the 12 months up to 31 March 2020.
Key findings:
- Reporting standards continuing to significantly improve from when we began this study. The number of companies ranked as ‘Detailed’ and ‘Leading’ has grown from a comparatively tiny 39 in 2008 to 109 companies in our latest report. Larger companies (ASX100) continue to set the standards for best practice, representing almost 70% of companies classified as ‘Leading’. The ASX101-200, by contrast, continues to house roughly 80% of the weakest reporting groups, ‘No reporting’ and ‘Basic’.
- For the fifth year in a row, companies rated ‘No reporting’ are outliers, with only 10% of companies falling into this category. While this is a small increase on last year, the gain is primarily driven by new entrants to the index which made up half of the non-reporters. We have also managed to maintain the number of ‘No reporters’ in the ASX200 to 20 companies or below for the fifth year in a row.
- 82 cents of every $1 invested in the ASX200 is invested in companies rated as ‘Detailed’ or ‘Leading’ company.
- ‘Leading’ reporters are the largest cohort in the ASX200, making up almost 40%.All but two new entrants (of 19) to the ASX200 were rated in the lowest two categories ‘No reporting’ and ‘Basic’, suggesting outside of the ASX200 there is a significant drop in the level of ESG reporting.
