Highlights

Highlights from the 2023 financial year

ESG Academy for our clients

  • as a digital learning offer to educate and train customers in the area of sustainability

97 percent client satisfaction

  • (result at least satisfied)

AI-supported knowledge and application platforms

  • for customized client solutions

Aktualisierter Supplier Code of Conduct

  • as a guideline for our suppliers
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In everything we do, we always set the highest standards of integrity, quality and ethics and strive to be the Clear Choice for our clients. Our values Integrity, Excellence, Courage, Together and For Better, which are anchored in the global KPMG network, are the foundation of our daily actions and an inclusive and diverse culture at KPMG. We are committed to these values at both national and international level. We see them as an obligation that shapes our personal and professional behaviour.

As a multidisciplinary auditing and consulting firm, our primary goal is to provide the best services for our clients. With our strategic focal points, we consistently focus on our clients, utilise the possibilities of technology and data and support our clients as partners in current transformational topics.

Further information can be found here.

 

In addition to professional and legal regulations, company-specific guidelines and global co-operation form the basis of our daily activities. These include the following standards:

(Global) Code of Conduct

KPMG has a national and an international code of conduct, the (Global) Code of Conduct. In addition to our corporate values, the two codes contain the most important guidelines and principles for our actions and behaviour in our daily work processes. This means that all KPMG employees are required to take responsibility for compliance with statutory, legal and ethical requirements at all times within their function and position.


United Nations Global Compact

KPMG International has been a member of the United Nations Global Compact since 2002. This is the world's largest initiative for responsible corporate governance and defines ten principles for a sustainable global economy. As a member of the global KPMG organisation, KPMG is also committed to the standards of this alliance. Further information on this and the current progress report of the United Nations Global Compact can be found at the following link.

I make a difference





Transparency plays a key role in putting ESG into practice. It is not enough just talk about it - it needs to be firmly integrated into the way companies operate. Taking the step to authentically report on what the company really does is a significant step forward in credibly addressing ESG issues.

Quality management

We create and maintain the trust of our customers, our employees and society by striving for the highest standards and integrity in our service provision.

Our quality management system creates a reliable framework for our daily activities in an extremely complex working environment with extensive legal requirements and regulations as well as our commitment to the highest quality of service. By implementing quality and risk management processes, we aim to avoid violations of the professional law applicable to us and thus rule out liability issues, economic risks and the loss of our independence. These measures also help to prevent the risk of reputational damage or the loss of mandates.

How we set the highest standards for the quality of our work

As part of our quality assurance, we implement a wide range of measures to ensure a consistently high level of quality in our services. These include the following:

  • System of Quality Management
    As a member of the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC), KPMG is obliged to establish a system of quality management in accordance with the international quality management standard ISQM 1. With the implementation of the "International System of Quality Management Standard 1" (ISQM 1) in 2022, we have significantly strengthened the robustness of our quality management system.
  • Compulsory training for all employees
    Compliance with laws, regulations and standards is at the centre of the daily work of all KPMG employees. Through regular independence and compliance training, we strengthen our employees' awareness of independence and the avoidance of bias. We also conduct regular independence surveys.
  • Prevention of corruption and bribery
    At KPMG, we have established an internal system-based approval process and control mechanism that is mandatory for all our donations, sponsorships, collaborations and memberships. To avoid bribery or the appearance of bribery, all employees are also subject to clear guidelines for accepting and offering benefits from and to third parties, particularly in the form of invitations and gifts. The principles contained therein are implemented in our internal processes and form part of the mandatory training for all employees.
  • Acceptance of engagements
    As part of our work as auditors, we follow strict selection criteria and firm principles when accepting client engagements. We carry out regular client relationship assessments by using our internal IT tools to perform risk analyses on engagement acceptance and to check for conflicts of independence and interest.
  • Management systems
    KPMG uses certified management systems to ensure the continuous quality of our services. These include our quality management system in accordance with DIN EN ISO 9001, our information security management system in accordance with ISO / IEC 27001 and our environmental management system in accordance with DIN EN ISO 14001.
  • Whistleblowing hotline
    Our whistleblowing hotline is available to employees, customers, subcontractors, suppliers and external third parties to anonymously report suspected cases of illegal or unethical behaviour.

    • Our training courses are mandatory for all employees and must be repeated annually. They focus on the following topics:

      • Data protection/information security
      • Independence
      • General Equal Treatment Act
      • Combating money laundering and terrorist financing
      • Financing of terrorism
      • Acting with integrity
      • Quality management according to DIN EN ISO 9001
      • Information security according to ISO / IEC 27001
      • Environmental management according to DIN EN ISO 14001

We continuously adapt and develop all the measures we have implemented. You can find out more about our governance topics in the KPMG Transparency Report. It also contains a detailed description of our quality management system.

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  • What we achieved in the 2023 financial year

      • No cases of corruption or bribery were reported to KPMG in the 2023 financial year either.

Data protection and information security

The information security and data protection of our stakeholders is our top priority.

The protection of client and personal data of third parties, including our clients, service providers and cooperation partners as well as our own employees, is an important goal for KPMG, especially in light of the rapid pace of technological progress. As an auditing firm that manages highly sensitive data on a daily basis, we attach particular importance to appropriate data protection precautions. We are also subject to mandatory legal requirements under criminal and professional law regarding confidentiality and professional supervision, the European General Data Protection Regulation (EU GDPR) and national data protection laws such as the German Federal Data Protection Act. The responsible handling of personal data is therefore an elementary component of our quality and risk management.

How data protection and information security are integrated at KPMG

  • Certified information security
    Our information security management system is certified in accordance with ISO / IEC 27001.
  • Data Protection Officer
    Our Group Data Protection Officer reports directly to the Executive Board and, together with his team, acts as the central point of contact for data protection issues at KPMG. The data protection officer also plays an active role in cross-departmental processes with data protection relevance, such as supplier onboarding.
  • Data protection training
    All our employees complete our mandatory annual data protection training. Employees in particularly sensitive areas of activity also receive additional training and information.
  • Professional confidentiality
    All employees must sign a declaration of commitment to professional confidentiality.
  • Risk-adequate organisational structures
    As part of our internal control system, we have created risk-adequate organisational structures, contractual regulations, guidelines, control processes and systemic safeguards for the protection of personal data, which are based, among other things, on the global KPMG Data Protection Policy and the contractual clauses on data protection (such as the Inter Firm Data Transfer Agreement) of KPMG International for the exchange of personal data in the global KPMG network.
  • Internal and external control processes
    KPMG has an internal audit function that performs its tasks independently and autonomously and also regularly assesses the effectiveness of data protection and information security processes. Our information security management system is also audited externally on an ongoing basis as part of regular re-certifications - particularly for ISO 27001.
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  • What we achieved in the 2023 financial year

      • KPMG continued to comply with data protection laws in the 2023 financial year and will continue to endeavour to continuously adapt the level of data protection to technical and regulatory progress in the future. Data protection-relevant incidents were clarified with the involvement of the Data Protection Officer. There were no breaches reportable to the competent authorities in the reporting period.

Supplier management

Compliance with environmental and social standards in our company and at our suppliers is a fundamental part of our sustainability strategy. With our sustainable supplier management, we want to contribute to achieving our climate target by 2030.

We also expect our suppliers to consistently comply with environmental and social standards, as our supply chain plays a crucial role in our ESG agenda and in the fulfilment of our climate protection targets (see Planet chapter). Procurement has a significant influence on measures to reduce CO2 emissions. This includes the selection of strategic suppliers who have also committed to complying with the requirements of the Science Based Target initiative. 

Chart (in German only)

We also expect our suppliers to consistently comply with environmental and social standards, as our supply chain plays a crucial role in our ESG agenda and in the fulfilment of our climate protection targets (see Planet chapter). Procurement has a significant influence on measures to reduce CO2 emissions. This includes the selection of strategic suppliers who have also committed to complying with the requirements of the Science Based Target initiative.

How we implement sustainable supplier management

  • Implementation of the requirements of the LkSG
    KPMG has been subject to the scope of the LkSG since 1 January 2023. To this end, we have implemented the required measures to fulfil our due diligence obligations both in our own business area and with our direct suppliers as well as in relation to our whistleblower system (see Declaration of Principles on Respect for Human Rights and the Environment). With regard to our suppliers and service providers, our initial risk analysis along the LkSG requirements resulted in an overall classification in the low to medium risk range. Building on this, we have implemented appropriate preventative measures, including the revision of our Supplier Code of Conduct, regular supplier qualifications including supplier self-disclosure for every new supplier and buyer training, which was supplemented by the LkSG requirements.
  • Supplier Code of Conduct
    We have developed an updated SCoC for collaboration with our suppliers and service providers. This serves as a guideline for suppliers on KPMG's sustainability principles and regulates important aspects with regard to compliance with the LkSG.
  • Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP)
    Together with the CDP, KPMG is working on a global project to significantly improve the availability of real data on the CO2 emissions of our largest suppliers. More information on this can be found in the chapter Planet.
  • Criteria catalogue with sustainability requirements
    We use a catalogue of criteria with sustainability requirements to specifically scrutinise the social and ecological standards we have set for our suppliers and service providers. At the same time, transparent framework conditions are defined for the selection of suppliers, materials and services and sustainability aspects are increasingly included in tenders.
  • Compliance with independence requirements
    Independence requirements must also be complied with in strategic procurement. KPMG has therefore implemented strict monitoring and assessment mechanisms for the commissioning of suppliers, including a whistleblowing hotline.
We are always on the lookout for the best and most innovative suppliers. Together, we endeavour to achieve our climate targets and make a sustainable contribution to the success of our business.
Michael Münnich
Michael Münnich

Head of Procurement

KPMG AG Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft

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  • What we achieved in the 2023 financial year

      • Our risk analysis as part of the LkSG has shown that none of our suppliers have a high risk rating. The majority (85 per cent) of our suppliers are based in Germany and are active in non-manufacturing industries.
      • In the context of the CDP, a large proportion of the suppliers we enquired about provided information on their CO2 emissions and thus demonstrated a great willingness to contribute to improving the global climate.

High-quality services in the interests of society

The services we provide to our customers represent our greatest contribution to sustainable development. They should always be in line with our values and have a positive impact on society.

The current global crises such as climate change, political conflicts, decoupling of economic relationships (de-coupling) and the resulting consequences such as unstable supply chains are further driving the transformation of the economy. Added to this are macroeconomic factors such as high inflation, sharp rises in gas and energy prices, rising interest rates and labour shortages due to demographic factors. This complex situation presents both our clients and KPMG with considerable challenges. In order to respond appropriately to these developments, we are continuously working on our growth topics of sustainability, digital transformation and governance and compliance. The aim is to take a leading position in these areas and offer our clients customised solutions to help them overcome current challenges in a targeted manner.

The implementation of ESG in one's own company as a competitive advantage is still greatly underestimated by many companies. In reality, however, it offers considerable opportunities to increase growth, profitability and company value. In view of the current economic, political and social challenges, companies should therefore adopt a strategic and at the same time realisable approach in order to position themselves sustainably for the future.
Goran Mazar
Goran Mazar

Partner, EMA & German Head of ESG

KPMG AG Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft

How we are a reliable partner for our customers

  • Audit
    Our audit services are currently heavily influenced by regulatory changes and forward-looking topics, to which we have to react flexibly and quickly. In our role as auditors and audit-related consultants, we not only recognise changes but also anticipate the challenges facing our clients. Our focus is on quality using state-of-the-art technology. In this way, we create trust and transparency on the capital market.
  • Tax
    Tax consulting is currently undergoing major change, with globalisation and digitalisation being key factors. At KPMG, we follow global developments, analyse trends in national and international tax law and use the expertise of our international units.
  • Advisory (Consulting & Deal Advisory):
    With our consulting services, we provide our customers with comprehensive support in their transformation processes - from the development of the strategy to the actual implementation along the entire value chain. In doing so, we combine our traditional strengths with technology, innovative approaches and in-depth industry expertise. In today's more complex and information-saturated environment, transaction decisions have to be made faster and more informed than ever before. We support our clients in overcoming daily challenges while preserving or increasing the value of their business. Our consulting services aim to future-proof their business by anticipating change, addressing challenges, monitoring risks and building resilience in turbulent times.
  • Financial Services
    Our in-depth understanding of banking and insurance business models and the market and competitive environment is just as much a matter of course for us as the contribution of our global project experience and our financial services network. Financial service providers receive comprehensive support from us through our expertise and modern technologies in the areas of purchase, sale, capital optimisation or transformation decisions. Our experts work with clients to rethink their business and operating models, adapt strategies and automate processes in a way that adds value and is sustainable and compliant.
  • ESG services
    Our cross-service portfolio includes advice on various ESG topics, including decarbonisation, the implementation of circular economy approaches, ensuring ethical standards in supply chains, enabling diversity in terms of employees as well as advice and auditing in the area of ESG reporting. In this way, we are contributing to the transformation towards a climate-positive, circular, resource-efficient and fair economy. KPMG offers employees various internal training formats and events, such as in-house trade fairs, to ensure continuous development in the area of ESG. These enable our teams to keep up to date with the latest ESG topics and developments. In addition, our employees have the opportunity to attend the ESG Expert Training programme, which is offered in collaboration with EBS University, for targeted further training in the area of ESG. We are also committed to sharing knowledge: The KPMG ESG Academy, which we also designed together with EBS University, provides a training programme that our clients can also use to educate and train themselves in the area of ESG.

    • At KPMG, we strive first and foremost to provide all our services in strict compliance with the regulatory and professional requirements to which we are subject as an auditing and consulting firm. These include, in particular, the independence requirements that apply to the performance of audits.

    • We are continuously working to further improve the quality of the services we offer. To this end, all KPMG member firms worldwide have introduced the KPMG Clara audit platform, which enables a standardised global approach to audits. This platform combines our many years of experience in auditing with innovative technology and is used worldwide as a consistent audit approach. Our goal is to provide our clients with consistently high quality, assurance and protection through KPMG Clara, while meeting the increased requirements of the Financial Markets Integrity Strengthening Act (FISG).

    • In the Tax division, we are guided by the Responsible Tax Principles of KPMG International, which serve as guidelines for our tax advisory activities:

      • Our aim is to help our clients achieve their economic goals through our tax advisory services. Our focus is on ensuring that our advice not only meets the highest professional standards, but is also tailored to the individual interests and financial situation of each client.
      • We always apply laws and regulations in accordance with their meaning and purpose and take current case law into account. Our advisory approach is not aimed at generating tax advantages through unnecessary transactions that run counter to the original purpose of the legislation.
      • We reject advice that is based solely on tax planning models or structures. Instead, we always pursue clear structural or economic objectives in our advice that create added value for our clients.
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What we achieved in the 2023 financial year

  • More than half of our employees have learnt about current sustainability issues and developments at our numerous internal ESG events.
  • We also continued our ESG roadshow through our branches. At these events, we reported on region-specific ESG projects and offered the opportunity to engage in professional dialogue with colleagues on site. Some of our customers were also invited to the events.
  • Our annual Future Summit, which spans several days of events, recorded over 5,100 external participants during the livestream in the last financial year (2022)
    • .
  • In collaboration with EBS University and Microsoft, we have launched the ESG Academy, a training programme for the education and training of our customers.

Awards and honours

We are recognised as a reliable partner: KPMG also received several awards in the 2023 financial year. Some of the honours are listed below.

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Innovation and customer focus

We want to contribute to the transformation of society and are committed to innovation so that we can overcome even the greatest challenges together with our customers.

Together with renowned analyst firms, we publish extensive studies and specialist publications in order to provide our clients and the general public with the latest information on the issues of our time. We also develop independent thought leadership publications in order to play an active role in shaping and promoting forward-looking topics. We also use new technologies and offer various platforms and formats to facilitate dialogue and exchange with our customers. This sustainable, cross-service and structured culture of innovation is largely driven by our employees.

How we create added value for our clients with our formats

  • Innovative use of AI at KPMG
    AI and cloud technologies will be utilised in all areas of KPMG's business through our expanded partnerships with leading IT and technology companies:
    • In Audit: Efficiency through intelligent audit platforms
      In our audit process, we integrate data analytics, AI and other services via our audit platform KPMG Clara. This approach enables our experts to focus more on high-risk audit areas and industry-specific risks.
    • In Tax: Digital Gateway for comprehensive tax solutions
      Our Digital Gateway platform gives our clients access to all tax technologies. This enables integrated access to their data and the implementation of a holistic management approach for their tax functions. In addition, our tax experts can now use a "virtual assistant" based on generative AI to make their work even more efficient.
    • In Advisory (Consulting and Deal Advisory): AI-supported knowledge and application platform for customised solutions
      In Advisory, our colleagues are efficiently supported by an AI-supported knowledge and application platform. This development makes it possible to develop customised customer solutions while taking ethical and security aspects into account.
    • Innovation for more sustainability
      We work closely with technology partners to support companies with their ESG goals. Building on the success of the KPMG Circularity Tracker and the ESG data management and analytics solution, we continue to help our clients unify and analyse data sources. Through our AI solutions, we can extract all the information needed to make real-time, value-enhancing decisions, helping our clients fulfil their sustainability commitments.
  • KPMG Innovation Challenge
    This format is an internal ideas competition in which our employees can submit creative suggestions for new solutions, for example. As part of the competition, the most promising ideas are developed from their original version to market maturity.
  • KPMG Ignition Centre
    With our Ignition Sessions at various locations in Germany, we create a space for creative innovation processes for our clients, from the initial idea to the finalisation of the product. We use methods such as Scrum and Design Thinking.
  • KPMG Innovation Factory
    This online platform pools the current expertise of our KPMG experts on innovation issues in various industries. Our clients can find ideas and ready-to-use solutions for relevant and current topics there.
  • Client Insights Programme
    We receive valuable feedback from our clients via our annual client satisfaction survey, the Client Insights Programme, and use it to gather opinions and potential for improvement in collaboration with our clients. The Client Insights Programme takes place annually in order to continuously improve the high quality of our services across all services.
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What we achieved in the 2023 financial year

  • KPMG Future Summit: The client event was held as a hybrid format as part of the KPMG event series, an annual exchange programme where respected experts speak on the growth topics of ESG, digital transformation and governance & compliance. This year's event attracted over 5,100 attendees, who listened to presentations from more than 100 speakers in over 40 sessions.
  • Through access to ESG databases and the use of technological solutions from our global partners such as Salesforce, Microsoft, Workiva, Service Now and others, we are able to offer our customers sound and competent advice on ESG topics.
  • We are bundling our commitment to future technologies, such as generative artificial intelligence (ChatGPT and others), in a newly founded Tech Initiative Hub, which develops and evaluates new innovative solutions across all services.

Customer reach (studies and specialist publications as well as virtual customer formats)

In the 2023 financial year, we published around 200 Klardenker articles and 250 studies.

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ESG Academy

In close cooperation with EBS University and Microsoft, we have developed the KPMG ESG Academy to actively integrate sustainable business practices into our clients' corporate culture. This digital training platform was developed by our ESG experts and includes lectures by professors from renowned universities to help companies comprehensively educate and train their managers, decision-makers and employees in the area of sustainability. Our KPMG ESG Academy offers a comprehensive curriculum with over 15 hours of learning content on key environmental, social and governance topics. This curriculum is flexible and customisable to our clients' needs and provides a technology-enabled and science-based learning experience.

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Thomas Löhmer

Thomas Löhmer

Partner, Central Services, Head of Our Impact Plan Germany

KPMG AG Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft
+49 69 951 18111 Thomas Löhmer Phone number
Mara Zimen

Mara Zimen

Division Manager, Sustainability Officer

KPMG AG Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft
+49 30 2068-4604 Mara Zimen Phone number

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