KPMG’s Our Impact Plan reports progress on ESG commitments

Highlights include:

• Advancements on commitments towards net zero by 2030
• The creation and introduction of a new Inclusion, Diversity and Equity (IDE) Collective Action Plan
• New commitments to support education and economic empowerment

23 March 2022, Singapore: KPMG International today published an update of its progress towards a broad set of ESG commitments, first published in 2021. KPMG: Our Impact Plan outlines how the entire global organisation is coming together to support improvements across four pillars: Planet, People, Prosperity and Governance. Our Impact Plan catalogues the most recent data from across the global organisation and charts the progress made against the World Economic Forum (WEF) International Business Council (IBC) metrics, which KPMG played a fundamental role in shaping.

Bill Thomas, Global Chairman and CEO, said: “As the world faces one of the most significant periods of unrest for a generation, more than ever, we are acutely aware of our responsibility to support our people, clients and societies to work together to secure a better, sustainable, more united future. KPMG was among the first in our profession to publicly catalogue our ESG commitments and report against them. As we face ever-increasing challenges in the world, we know we must hold ourselves accountable for the decisions we make which will help shape the future. That is why we are publishing our progress today and will continue to work with stakeholders, colleagues and clients to support the positive changes we need to see in the world.”

Ong Pang Thye, Managing Partner, KPMG in Singapore, said: “Climate change and social equity are all economic issues and company challenges. On top of national policies and regulations, company-level strategies such as internal carbon pricing signals will be needed to signal commitment and shift stakeholders towards positive outcomes of impact. As countries worldwide, including Singapore, reaffirm their net-zero targets and environmental, social and governance goals, KPMG’s Our Impact Plan 2022 narrates a roadmap of how measurable change could look like for enterprises, industries, communities and employees whom we work with, and how it begins with collective accountability, undergirded by the foundations of trust and transparency.”

KPMG: Our Impact Plan reaffirms our long-standing adherence to the United Nations (UN) Global Compact Principles, a commitment we will continue to strengthen and report on openly. Some of the highlights of this year’s update include:

• Planet: We’re implementing sustainable and equitable practices within our global organisation by evaluating our supply chain and creating science-based transition plans so we can move to net zero in a fair and just way. As part of our commitment to be net zero by 2030, we set an Internal Carbon Price (ICP) that will help us measure and account for our carbon impact. We also committed to a 1.5°C Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) with a target of 50% emissions reduction by 2030. Our renewable electricity usage across the global organisation increased to 74%, up from 56% in 2020.

• People: We created and introduced KPMG’s Inclusion, Diversity and Equity (IDE) Collective Action Plan throughout the global organisation. We’re taking important steps toward gender diversity, with females representing 48.4% of our people, and it’s our intention for women to fill more than one-third of our leadership roles by 2025. We’ve made a commitment to the health and well-being of our people through initiatives that support their physical and mental health, and invested in our own digital transformation by enhancing learning pathways that upskill our talent in areas such as technology and ESG.

• Prosperity: We announced last year a multi-billion-dollar investment to embed ESG into everything we do — enhancing our already robust tools and services to help accelerate our clients’ ESG journeys. Part of this investment will be used to build ESG hubs on multiple continents and create ESG accelerators to spur investment and innovation in emerging markets. We’re also training our more than 236,000 people to become agents of positive change and assisting clients on three pillars of opportunity: ESG transformation, ESG reporting and ESG assurance. We continue to work alongside organisations to make significant contributions toward the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4) — including our work with UNESCO to help economically empower 10 million disadvantaged young people between now and 2030.

• Governance: Our work with the WEF, to set the IBC metrics for ESG reporting is one example of how we’re using our experience and knowledge to help shape the future of sustainable business. We’ve accepted roles at the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC), the Financial Stability Board’s (FSB) Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) and the Taskforce for Nature-related Disclosures (TNFD). This work is part of the wider role we believe we must play to support the development of consistent and credible information on sustainability matters, including supporting the newly formed International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB).

Jane Lawrie, Global Head of Corporate Affairs, said: “In advancing Our Impact Plan, we aim to focus on the issues that are most important to our people, central to our business and where we can make the biggest difference. We’re responding to events that are reshaping our world and taking actions that are core to the sustainable future of our people, clients and communities. Our Impact Plan not only highlights what we stand for as a global organisation, it also provides a clear ESG roadmap for the organisation and shows us, and our stakeholders, if we are on track.”

Richard Threlfall, Global Head of ESG and KPMG IMPACT, said: “It’s incumbent upon business, political and civic leaders to tackle the challenges that impact the future of our planet and threaten our quality of life, now and for future generations. We are wholeheartedly committed to supporting the responsible transformation of organisations — including our own — and encourage one and all to face what seems like an overwhelming challenge with positivity and a sense of collective responsibility.”