Why investors use SASB Standards
Leading global investors want to evaluate how companies are managing their sustainability-related risks and opportunities. Investors need access to comparable, standardised data they can use to inform their decisions.
SASB Standards, which are uniquely tailored for investors, help address this need. Because they are industry-based, metric-driven and focused on the risks and opportunities most likely to affect cash flows, access to finance and cost of capital, SASB Standards enable integration of sustainability considerations into investment and stewardship decisions across global portfolios and asset classes. They also provide investors with comparable data that feeds the data and analytics ecosystem.
Leading international investors support SASB Standards as a fundamental way for companies to communicate relevant sustainability information to investors in an industry-based and comparable way. These investors—across markets, asset classes and strategies—use SASB Standards to integrate sustainability considerations into their investment decisions.
As of August 2022, the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) of the IFRS Foundation assumed responsibility for the SASB Standards. The ISSB has committed to maintain, enhance and evolve the SASB Standards and encourages preparers and investors to continue to use the SASB Standards. This commitment includes a prominent role for SASB Standards in the IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards, which leading global investors support.
SASB Standards help investors…
- Access corporate sustainability data that is comparable, consistent and likely to affect an entity’s cash flows, access to finance and cost of capital
- Identify priority issues for corporate engagement
- Improve the quality of fundamental equity and credit analysis in both public and private markets by incorporating a broader information set beyond financial statements
- Expand risk reporting to encompass sustainability risks in addition to traditional risk measures like volatility
- Develop a better understanding of sector-specific risks to inform risk allocation and risk management
- Fulfil PRI signatory commitments
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Investor Perspectives
Fund managers require access to financially material ESG-related information from corporate issuers that is accurate, comparable, and timely. There is an emerging global consensus that companies should follow TCFD recommendations and SASB standards, and ICI members support this approach to help ensure fund managers can get useful information to make important decisions consistent with the investment objectives of funds and the needs of their shareholders.
SASB and TCFD already have a significant amount of traction with global investors and companies and are the basis on which many investors are developing their ESG integration processes….This sector specific approach and focus on governance and materiality provides essential information for investors to incorporate ESG information into their investment and stewardship processes and importantly, to be able to compare the long-term value of companies within sectors on a consistent basis.
Carine Smith Ihenacho
NBIM's Chief Corporate Governance Officer and member of the SASB Standards IAG
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Our mission is to safeguard and build wealth for future generations. As a long-term, universal investor, we have an interest in sustainable development. We urge (the supply of) standardised, concrete and relevant sustainability data and we ask companies to go from words to numbers – because what gets measured gets managed.
While no framework is perfect, BlackRock believes that the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) provides a clear set of standards for reporting sustainability information across a wide range of issues, from labour practices to data privacy to business ethics.
As CEOs of Canada’s eight largest pension plan investment managers, representing $1.6 trillion in assets under management, we are committed to creating more sustainable and inclusive growth by integrating environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors into our strategies and investment decisions… We ask that companies measure and disclose their performance on material, industry-relevant ESG factors by leveraging the SASB Standards and the TCFD framework to further standardize ESG-related reporting.
SASB focuses exclusively on the materiality of ESG information, including climate-related data. At CFA Institute, we consider SASB a key research tool for investors looking into climate-related data because of SASB’s focus on materiality.
We ask debt and equity issuers listed in the Mexican financial markets to adopt the internationally recognised standards issued by the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), and the recommendations issued by the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD).