The move to mandatory reporting

Companies worldwide are preparing for the advent of mandatory reporting on sustainability, according to the 2024 edition of KPMG’s Survey of Sustainability Reporting. The research shows that sustainability reporting has become part of business as usual for almost all of the world’s largest 250 companies, and a large majority of the top 100 companies in each country, territory or jurisdiction. The last two years have seen significant increases in the proportion of companies publishing carbon reduction targets. The proportion of companies reporting on biodiversity remains lower but has similarly increased since 2022.

The survey finds growth in practices that will soon be mandatory in some jurisdictions, including the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). The report includes insights from KPMG member firms and draws on the expertise of KPMG subject matter specialists worldwide.

The move to mandatory reporting

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The move to mandatory reporting

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Six major trends from the report

Reporting on sustainability and setting carbon targets has become part of business as usual.
Some companies have already changed practices in advance of the move to mandatory reporting on sustainability under the EU’s CSRD.
Double materiality, required under CSRD, is now used by half of the largest companies.
Despite moves toward mandatory reporting, voluntary guidelines and standards remain widely-used.
Reporting on biodiversity continues to increase.
Adoption of Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) recommendations has continued to increase with IFRS S2 ready to rise.

About the survey

The Survey of Sustainability Reporting 2024 is based on detailed research by KPMG professionals representing 58 member firms. For each country, territory or jurisdiction listed below, they have reviewed annual financial, integrated and ESG/sustainability reports published by the largest 100 companies. With data from 5,800 companies this edition is jointly the most comprehensive in the series, which has run since 1993

CSRD will make reporting on ESG and sustainability mandatory for around 50,000 companies including thousands headquartered outside the EU including more than 3,000 in the United States.

All of the companies surveyed by KPMG in Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Thailand and the United States report on ESG and sustainability.

82 percent of the largest 250 companies include information on sustainability in their annual reports, largely due to increasing inclusion of such information by Chinese and US companies.

Automotive companies are the most likely to include sustainability within their annual reports, followed by oil and gas, chemicals and mining companies.

The most popular guidelines and standards remain those run by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), which are used by 77 of the world’s 250 largest companies.

SASB standards are particularly popular in the Americas while guidelines published by local stock exchanges are heavily used in a few countries, territories and jurisdictions.

Formal assurance statements on published sustainability reporting or information will be mandatory under the EU’s CSRD.

By region they are most popular among European companies with 59 percent of those surveyed publishing these. They are published by more than 80 percent of companies in Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, South Korea and Taiwan.

This edition introduces coverage of double materiality, where companies assess both their impacts on society and the environment and how this affects financial performance, required under the EU’s CSRD.

The research finds that 42 percent of all 5,800 companies in the survey use double materiality and 79 percent carry out any kind of materiality assessment.

Carbon reduction targets have become near-ubiquitous among the world’s largest 250 companies with 95 percent using them. The figure for all 5,800 companies in the survey is 80 percent.

Such targets are published by all sampled Japanese companies and 93 percent of Chinese companies, the latter a 55 percentage point increase from 38 percent in 2022.

The proportion of all 5,800 companies in the research which report on loss of biodiversity and nature as a risk to the business has more than doubled since 2020, from 23 percent four years ago to 49 percent now.

Brazil, Japan and the Netherlands have the highest proportion of companies reporting on biodiversity.

Use of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in reporting has stabilized following a period of rapid adoption with 75 percent of companies surveyed using them.

Use of a balanced approach to SDG reporting, communicating both the positive and the negative impacts the company has, is growing
but remains much less common than reporting only positive impacts.

The recommendations of the TCFD, which disbanded in 2023, have been adopted by 72 percent of the 250 largest companies.

This edition of the survey starts tracking IFRS S2 for climate-related disclosures, which is already referenced by 4 percent of companies.

Climate specific reporting has nearly doubled among all companies surveyed since 2017, with 55 percent doing this. Reporting on social and governance issues is now at similar levels.

Most companies provide only narrative descriptions of the risks of potential ESG impacts, rather than for example modeling of the potential impacts of climate risks.

Mandatory sustainability reporting is nearly upon us. The EU is phasing in its CSRD over several years but 2024’s KPMG Survey of Sustainability Reporting suggests that many companies are adopting its measures before they are required to do so.

Dr Jan-Hendrik Gnändiger
Global ESG Reporting Lead, KPMG International

We are making noticeable progress with ESG reporting in a way that supports short-term and long-term business objectives... We can do it. We are doing it. Let’s keep going.

John McCalla-Leacy
Head of Global ESG, KPMG International