ESG ratings and benchmarks

ESG ratings and benchmarks assess a company’s performance in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) areas, providing investors and stakeholders with insights into the company’s sustainability practices and risks. These ratings are typically issued by third-party agencies focusing on topics like climate change, labour practices and governance. 

CDP and Ecovadis are the most wide-spread ratings responded by large and small companies, while stock-listed companies respond to ESG ratings such as MSCI ESG Rating, Morningstar Sustainalytics ESG Risk Rating, and S&P Global Corporate Sustainability Assessment (CSA).

• Ecovadis (click here for more information) is a globally recognised, voluntary sustainability assessment platform that evaluates and rates a company’s sustainability performance.
• CDP (click here for more information) is a global environmental disclosure system that helps organisations measure and manage their environmental impacts. It provides a structured framework for reporting on key sustainability topics, including climate change, water security and forests, enabling consistent, comparable, and transparent data disclosure.
• MSCI is a globally recognised ESG rating provider that assesses how well companies manage ESG risks and opportunities relative to peers. The focus is on long-term value creation and investor confidence through transparency and strong risk oversight.
• Sustainalytics, a Morningstar company, provides ESG Risk Ratings that assess how well companies manage material environmental, social, and governance risks that could impact enterprise value. The focus is on the financial relevance of ESG risks.
• The S&P Global CSA is an annual evaluation of companies' sustainability practices, focusing on criteria that are both industry specific and financially material.

Navigating the ESG ratings and benchmarks

Navigating the world of ESG ratings and benchmarks can feel like wading through a jungle of acronyms and criteria. Moreover, scoring methodologies could be highly technical and challenging to navigate. Many companies struggle to identify critical gaps and translate the questions into actions to improve their future performance and rating scores. Also, responding to questionnaires require dedicated availability of internal experts during the respond period.  

We help businesses understand what ESG ratings like CDP, Ecovadis, MSCI, Sustainalytics and S&P Global CSA are looking for, and how you can use them to your advantage. Whether you are aiming to build your sustainability strategy and improve your ESG performance or improve your ESG rating score, we break down the process and guide you step-by-step, so your sustainability efforts are accurately recognised and rewarded.

Our approach

To respond to ESG ratings such as MSCI, Sustainalytics and S&P CSA, we have developed a five-step approach to help you respond to the ratings and eventually increase your rating scores. We help you meet the questionnaire requirements while using the process as an opportunity to strengthen your overall ESG performance.

Our approach ensures that your response to the ESG disclosures/questionnaires are complete, consistent, and strategically framed, providing the insights needed to improve your rating scores while building internal capability for future cycles.

For more information regarding our approaches to EcoVadis and CDP, please visit the dedicated pages on our website.

Our services include:

• Gap analysis: Question by question gap analysis, taking the scoring methodology into account, providing practical recommendations to strengthen and refine responses. This can be done using either previous year’s response, or the disclosure year’s draft response.
• Drafting, reviewing and optimisation: Question by question development of narrative responses or review of drafted responses with recommendations to improve clarity, consistency, and scoring.
• Submission support: Hands-on assistance to fill in the questionnaire directly in the ESG rating portal.
• Strategic roadmaps: Longer-term improvement plans to improve future ESG performance and ratings score.