What's wrong with financial materiality assessments for sustainability reporting?

There are four well-known problems that we need to overcome to report on what is important AND exclude what isn't.

🙄 Subjectivity. Deciding what is "material" requires significant management judgement, making it difficult to defend and to compare across companies.

❓ Ambiguous thresholds. The lack of standardised quantitative metrics or weighting leads to inconsistency and lack of trust.

⏱️ Short-term Focus. Assessments naturally favour the known over the unknown so struggle with longer-term risks inherent in environmental, social and governance factors.

🔊 Over-disclosure. As seen from the first wave of CSRD reporting, too much noise buries the signal.

📅 Help is at hand! If you would like to know more about 'Data-driven Materiality for Sustainability Reporting. Fresh approaches', join an industry workshop 8 May at Brunel University of London. To see the agenda and attend, please drop me a message.