Joint effort to standardize sustainability reporting

Insights

19/08/2021

Lumera is built on partnership. It’s in our blood, our operating model and our technology.

We’re driving our customers forward together – individually, and as a whole industry. We bring customers together to guide the development of the platform – to help the whole Life and Pensions industry advance towards agility, efficiency and effectiveness together. That means our customers receive dedicated strategic and technical guidance to translate business objectives and legal requirements into new operational processes and technology capabilities. Since our policy administration platform is standardized, all customers benefit from every improvement.

The Standardization Committee is one of our joint customer forums that guides the development of standardized and efficient functions, products and processes. As part of the Standardization Committee, we have work groups for discussions of specific topics. These work groups are referred to as standardization forums. During our latest Standardization forum for sustainability reporting, we discussed the requirements of the periodic reporting for the ESG* determinants as defined by the Disclosure Regulation EU 2019/2088. A walk-through of the published Regulatory Technical Standards (RTS) and the templates for reporting was presented and possible enhancements to meet the requirements for the Lumera product were discussed. In conclusion, the amount of data required to meet the regulation standards will have an impact on the performance of Lumera products and their integrations. In addition, we touch based on the up-coming regulation from EU concerning Human Rights Due Diligence as well as proposed amendments to the current IFRS Foundation Constitution.

The proposed targeted amendments to the IFRS Foundation Constitution aim to accommodate an international sustainability standards board to set IFRS sustainability standards. The foundation is an international, non-profit organization that produces globally accepted IFRS standards that help investors make informed decisions.

Notwithstanding differences in scope and motivation, all stakeholders share a common message; there is an urgent need to improve the consistency and comparability in sustainability reporting. A set of comparable and consistent standards will allow businesses to build public trust through greater transparency of their sustainability initiatives, which will be helpful both to investors and an even broader audience in a context in which society is demanding initiatives to combat climate change.

*Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria are a set of standards for a company’s operations that socially conscious investors use to screen potential investments. Environmental criteria consider how a company performs as a steward of nature. Social criteria examine how it manages relationships with employees, suppliers, customers, and the communities where it operates. Governance deals with a company’s leadership, executive pay, audits, internal controls, and shareholder rights.

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