Corporate sustainability governance
Robust corporate sustainability governance structures mean we can effectively integrate and instil our sustainability-related policies, processes, and initiatives. Our approach is led by a dedicated sustainability team who work collaboratively with other departments to develop and implement our corporate sustainability-related policies.
This team operates within our Group Legal, Governance and Sustainability department, overseen by our Group General Counsel, who is a member of the Group Management Team and attends all Group Supervisory Board meetings. Both our Group General Counsel and our Global Head of Sustainability have overall responsibility for our sustainability strategy, regularly reporting on initiatives to the Group Management Team (GMT) and Group Supervisory Board (GSB).
Our Business Ethics and Sustainability Committee (BESCo) oversees business ethics and sustainability-related risks across our Group including the oversight of climate-related risks and our corporate sustainability strategy. BESCO is a sub-committee of the Group Risk and Compliance Committee (GRACC) and the GRACC is chaired by an independent non-executive director.
Preparing for CSRD
The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) is a piece of European legislation that mandates that companies report on their corporate sustainability performance. It builds on previous legislation and has a degree of alignment with the GRI Standards. As a European-headquartered business, IQ EQ Group will be required to comply with CSRD from FY2025 (reporting in 2026).
A major focus for CSRD is on double materiality which requires that we report on how sustainability issues affect our business and how our operations impact people and planet. We’ll be conducting a double materiality assessment in partnership with Anthesis during the second half of 2024. We’re also engaging with other external third parties as well as our corporate auditor, Deloitte, to ensure that we’re aware of additional sustainability-related data requirements, and how these should be integrated into our financial statements.
Our BESCo is responsible for the oversight of our preparedness and has members across key functions including from the Legal, Governance, Sustainability, Risk and Compliance, Internal Audit, Human Resources and Finance. We believe we’re on track to comply with CSRD and to report in 2026. Our aim is to publish a sustainability report in 2025 that follows the CSRD reporting requirements closely so that we’re ready for full reporting in 2026.
For more information on BESCo and governance please see the section above, our Governance section and Taskforce for Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) section of the appendix in this report.
Materiality
In 2023 we continued to focus on those areas identified in previous materiality studies, including primary material topics identified relating to our people pillar. This includes DE&I, employee engagement and development, alongside governance topics such as business ethics, data privacy and security, as well as environment.
We also considered the sustainability criteria by which we’re assessed in our annual EcoVadis assessment which enables us to benchmark our ESG performance each year.
Sustainability criteria
