ICSWG-US Votes to Support the ESG Integrated Disclosure Project

ATLANTA & BOSTON & CHICAGO & CINCINNATI & NEW YORK & SAN FRANCISCO & ST. LOUIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Investment Consultants Sustainability Working Group - United States (“ICSWG-US”) announced today that the group’s steering committee has voted to support the ESG Integrated Disclosure Project (ESG IDP) with the objective of improving prospective credit borrower’s data disclosure and reporting on standardized, decision-useful, environmental, sustainability and governance (“ESG”) metrics. The ICSWG-US is a collaboration among 17 investment consulting firms, representing more than $36 trillion in assets under advisement.

In November 2022, the ESG IDP launched a harmonizing ESG reporting tool for credit markets. The template is intended to support investor needs for more quantitative and more comparable, decision-useful data, in the absence of government regulated disclosure. The reporting tool builds upon existing frameworks including the Sustainable Accounting Standards Board (SASB, now part of ISSB), the Loan Syndications and Trading Association (LSTA) Due Diligence ESG Questionnaire, and the ESG Data Convergence Initiative (EDCI) for ESG disclosure in private equity.

The ESG IDP template provides a set of questions designed to solicit a baseline of consistent information from prospective borrowers, which may be enhanced or modified as deemed appropriate to meet independent fiduciary responsibilities. The template includes two categories of questions. First, there are general questions that are applicable to any company in any industry. Second, the template includes industry-specific questions, based on SASB industry classifications, that represent a subset of disclosure topics to facilitate disclosure of industry-specific financially material information by private companies.

As investment consultants, we support having a widely agreed upon template that can help harmonize ESG reporting for credit markets. The project template is available for use by investors and borrowers across all private credit markets. The template and additional information are available at: www.esgidp.org.

About ICSWG-US (www.ICSWG-US.org; Contact: [e-mail])
The Investment Consultants Sustainability Working Group - United States (ICSWG-US) is a collaboration among investment consulting firms to engage with its collective stakeholders and empower asset owners and their ultimate beneficiaries to advance sustainable investment practices across the investment industry. The ICSWG-US aims to support sustainable investment practices across institutional asset owners and asset managers. Through this effort, ICSWG-US members seeks to provide perspectives from the consultant community and be a resource on activities such as standardization of environmental, social and governance (“ESG”) integration and climate-related reporting, regulations, and innovations.