Denmark’s statutory pension fund ATP is warning that mandatory corporate reporting coming in next year under the EU’s sustainability rules could lead to over-reporting, and has told Danish companies in its own portfolio which datapoints it actually wants to reported on.
The Copenhagen-based pension fund’s ESG team produced an analysis around companies’ expectations regarding new rules from the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), which oblige large businesses to include sustainability data in their annual reports from 2025.
ATP said in the analysis published yesterday: “CSRD must provide knowledge about sustainability, but not lead to over-reporting.”
Martin Præstegaard, chief executive officer of the DKK693bn (€92.9bn) pension fund, said: “We investors must have the right data to be able to assess the companies, but it must not be drowned in information about big things and small.”
The pension fund said that in the questionnaire it had sent companies, it had also included its own wishlist of the ESG reporting it wanted to see.
“ATP wants to help by pointing out the information we see as relevant across sectors,” the CEO said.
The pension fund drew several conclusions in its analysis, including that the complex CSRD legislation would require a lot of resources, and that the high level of freedom of choice given to companies regarding their reporting and the many different areas contained in the scheme, would weaken comparability.
The pension fund also noted that there was a large variation in the expected reporting level of companies under the new CSRD rules.
Three themes were seen as material for all 33 portfolio companies responding to the survey, while seven themes varied in their relevance to firms, ATP said.
The three ESRS (European Sustainability Reporting Standards) that 100% of companies in ATP’s survey said they expected to be relevant for their organisation were climate, own workforce and business conduct.
Meanwhile, resource use and circular economy, workers in the value chain, and consumers and end users came out in the poll as expected to be material for 79%, 76% and 67% of firms respectively.
Fewer companies saw pollution, biodiversity and ecosystems, water and marine resources and affected communities as being material, with 48%, 45%, 33% and 18%, respectively, of the firms responding to the survey saying that was the case for their organisation.
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