Turn your ESG ambitions into measurable impact

Investors and stakeholders seek insight into a company's economic, environmental and social value. Integrated reporting addresses this need by providing a broader basis for assessing a company's value, performance, and sustainability. It is more than just combining the financial report with the sustainability report. Integrated reporting is characterized by:

• Focus on Value Creation: Emphasizes how the company creates value for shareholders and stakeholders, with attention to long-term strategic goals.
• Interconnection of Financial and Non-Financial Data: Highlights the relationship between sustainability factors and financial performance, including risks and impacts.
• Clarity: Offers clear, straightforward communication without vague indicators or greenwashing, ensuring stakeholders understand the company's sustainability efforts.
• Process-Oriented: Reflects the company’s decision-making processes and future development, including environmental, social, and governance considerations.

Integrated reporting also encompasses compliance with regulations such as the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), EU Taxonomy, and Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR). These frameworks guide companies in disclosing relevant sustainability information, ensuring alignment with European Union standards for transparency and responsible investment.

Companies will need to ensure transparency in both financial and non-financial, or sustainability, data through integrated reporting. At TriFinance, we guide businesses on their path to compliance with the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). Whether you're new to ESG reporting or seeking to strengthen your approach, our expert team offers customized solutions that align with your goals, driving sustainable change and securing ESG compliance.

1. Create the right awareness (board and all employees) going beyond reporting requirements
2. Run the Double Materiality Assessment to identify material topics and define strategic implications, including IRO (Impacts, Risks and Opportunities) identification and value chain mapping;
3. Perform a fit-gap analysis, to identify the gaps towards your sustainability compliance, resulting in a specific action plan.
4. Map/Design processes and data model and define a framework (including detailed work instructions per responsible). Data must be integrated into a single data model and processes must be modified in order to acquire these specific KPIs and display them in dashboards. 
5. Define detailed business requirements for the data management model & roll out the implementation wrt. data-gathering, data-input, consolidation of the data, output reports (KPI & metrics);
6. Write & validate your integrated report.

The EU Taxonomy is providing a clear framework for identifying environmentally sustainable activities. At TriFinance, we specialize in helping businesses navigate this complex classification system, ensuring alignment with regulatory requirements. 

1. Identification of eligible activities: Eligible activities are those that contribute to environmental or social objectives, such as reducing emissions or promoting resource efficiency. 
2. Assessing substantial contribution: Assessing if the company is making a substantial contribution to at least one of the environmental objectives.
3. Do not significantly harm: Assessing if the company is doing no significant harm to any other environmental objective.
4. Compliance with minimum safeguards: Minimum safeguards ensure that activities comply with ethical standards like labor rights and governance practices. These safeguards align with international conventions to promote responsible business conduct.

KPI’s (OPEX, CAPEX & net turnover): OPEX and CAPEX track operational and investment expenditures related to sustainability initiatives, like energy efficiency and green technologies. Net turnover measures the revenue generated from sustainable activities.

SFDR - Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation - requires financial market participants to disclose a similar set of sustainability information about their financial products. The objective behind is to channel capital flows towards sustainable investments and to increase transparency about sustainability risks that may have an impact on the financial system.

To be able to comply with the SFDR requirements, our approach consists of 5 steps:

1. Assess the ESG profile:
   • On entity level (level 1): determine how ESG considerations will be integrated into investment decision-making processes.
   • On product level (level 2): determine if the product is an article 9 (with sustainable objective), article 8 (without sustainable objective but promoting environmental and/or social characteristics) or article 6 (residual category).
2. Determine the level of disclosure and requirements per product category. This can range from pre-contractual disclosures to periodic reporting, ad hoc reporting, website disclosures and entity-level disclosures.
3. Assess the alignment with EU Taxonomy. Although a positive alignment is not required, measuring and reporting the level of alignment regularly for article 8 & 9 products is required.
4. Design & Implement the data collection to report framework: establish processes for collecting relevant ESG data (internal & external) & design reporting processes within the organization. 

Validate (assurance), report and monitor compliance regularly based on continuous developments of ESG regulations and standards.

Internal audit, internal control and risk management functions must keep up with emerging ESG risks, navigate shifting ESG regulatory landscapes, and leverage new technologies that provide greater insight into ESG risks through advanced analytics. 

Our deliverables: 

• Internal audits, including actionable recommendations to comply with ESG regulations;
• ESG internal control framework in line with COSO principles;
• Enterprise risk assessments to identify and manage existing and emerging ESG risks.

Did you know that different grants may apply for your sustainability transformation? TriFinance can guide you in this identification of grants which may apply for you.

Our deliverables: 

• Identification of suitable grants based on your business model and sustainability investments & plans;
• Grant application coordination;
• Overview of grants, amounts and possible funding.

TriFinance offers classical training sessions for companies and individual professionals to develop their knowledge of ESG reporting. The sessions are tailored to different knowledge levels. Designed and led by TriFinance experts, our trainings are grounded in real-world experience and practical examples, ensuring a hands-on, pragmatic approach that directly benefits your organization.

If your company is uncertain about how to start your compliance journey or finding it challenging to establish a clear and structured approach, expert guidance in sustainability reporting is essential. TriFinance is here to provide the expertise you need, offering tailored support and clear direction at every step of your compliance and reporting processes. As your ESG mentor, we steer your company in the right direction, streamlining your compliance journey and delivering clear, actionable recommendations tailored specifically to your needs.

Our flexible, pragmatic, tailor-made solutions are typically a combination of operational support, delivered by our Transition & Support Blue Chip Boutiques, and specific subject-matter expertise, industry knowledge and pragmatic advisory methodologies.