Although CSRD is EU-wide legislation, most currently issued reports are prepared by companies from the Eurozone. Only 15% of companies prepared a report for 2023 and additional 32% will prepare one for 2024.
Most of CFOs (65%) in companies that delivered a CSRD report for 2023 consider it either a risk management tool or a source of value creation. The less CFOs knew about CSRD, the more likely they were to treat report preparation as a cost item, leading to more than 50% viewing it as an additional cost. CFOs from Technology, Media and Telecommunications sector regard CSRD as a source of value creation, and those from Life Sciences treat it as a risk management tool.
More than half of companies that prepare CSRD reports do so or plan to do so with the help of an external consultant. Companies from Business & Professional Services, Life Sciences and Technology, Media, and Telecommunication sectors are most likely to prepare reports inhouse. The same tendency is observed in companies operating in Czechia and Poland-Baltics Cluster.
To ensure compliance with CSRD, most companies either develop an ESG strategy (43%), or establish a dedicated cross-functional team (30%). The third most popular approach is hiring a dedicated team.
The preparation of corporate CSRD reports will be the responsibility of ESG departments (47%) or CFOs (31%). Only CFOs from the Financial Services sector and from Slovakia are more likely to assume the responsibility instead of delegating it to an ESG department. In Croatia and Consumer Business Sector, answers are split evenly. The largest corporations whose annual revenues exceed EUR 1 billion are much more likely to delegate the responsibility to their ESG departments (71%).
Among companies that have already completed the double materiality assessment process, approximately two-thirds used external assistance, while the other relied on internal resources. At least half of the CFOs from Financial Services and Business & Professional Services sectors, and of companies operating in Croatia and Slovenia say that their companies have already completed the double materiality assessment. 41% of companies, mostly from Life Sciences, Consumer Business, and Construction sectors, as well as those operating in Romania, Slovakia and Poland-Baltics Cluster have not finished the process.
Nearly half of all respondents indicate that their companies have selected a CSRD auditor. When choosing an auditor for their sustainability reports, entities tend to prefer firms that audit their financial statements. Having an auditor of a sustainability report selected is an incentive to perform the double materiality assessment.