Bloomberg is to launch a new offering to provide access to the ESG data companies will report under EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD).
Coming into force from next year, the directive will expand the number of EU-based firms required to disclose ESG data, and will expand the range of data they are required to report to more than 1,000 data points, although not all of these will be relevant to every company.
Nadia Humphreys, global head of sustainable finance data solutions at Bloomberg, told Environmental Finance that Bloomberg Terminals already host a vast amount of ESG data “and some previously reported ESG data may no longer be reported” after the CSRD comes into effect.
Only about a third of commonly reported ESG data metrics are an exact match for the quantitative data points required by the CSRD, with the remaining two-thirds being “proxies or near matches but not precisely what CSRD is asking for”, she added. As a result, new data fields will be added to cover mandatory quantitative disclosures under CSRD, covering both financial and impact materiality.
Some two-thirds of the data required by the CSRD is narrative, which poses a challenge to host on the terminal
“We are trying to work with clients to know ‘What do you want to know from that narrative?’ she added. “Is quantitative data enough for you to do that filtering? Clients are really early in that journey.”
Humphreys believes the CSRD will have a significant impact on the ESG data landscape.
“It is broader than the ISSB [the International Sustainability Standards Board] and includes taxonomy reporting and broadens that massively by saying: ‘You need to consider what is financially material to your organisation and material in terms of the impact on the environment or social consequences’.
“It will be really helpful to the investor community [looking] to understand impact.
“There are a lot of very thorough questions in the CSRD about risks and opportunities related to climate. It asks for transition plans for 2030 and breaks out disclosure across additional factors, like water, pollution, biodiversity and circular economy. They will encourage an organisation to understand how to move that forward.
“CSRD will encourage that narrative in an organisation. It will support change management in a company, asking ‘What do I want to look like in 2030?’
“It’s very exciting. CSRD is a welcome inclusion to the armoury.
Companies required to report in 2025 are already included in Bloomberg’s coverage, which will expand to also include the companies that will start to report in 2026.