For those who missed it, Georgeson's "Top 5 Takeaways from the Society for Corporate Governance’s 2019 National Conference" conveys instructive color and context on the dialogue that took place among investors and companies at the Conference session: "Sideboard: A Conversation with SASB Investor Advisory Group." Investor panelists included SASB IAG members with Nordea Asset Management, Vanguard, Wells Fargo, Capital Group, Goldman Sachs, and the OTPP, all of whom spoke about their various approaches to and uses of the SASB framework.
Based on the institutional investor sentiment expressed, Georgeson suggests companies:
- Be familiar with the SASB framework
- Know what SASB deems material for their company
- Have some framework for establishing materiality of various factors, such as:
- What's material and how do we decide?
- What qualitatively does the company want to overlay on that data?
- Who at the board level covers it and what do they do?
- Address conflicting views head-on and provide context for any SASB questions/metrics that are not relevant:
- We can't do this and here's why
- We won't do this and it's not relevant and here's why
- Here are the questions/metrics we think should apply, based on our own materiality analysis
Access additional information & resources on our Sustainability/ESG page. This post first appeared in the weekly Society Alert!