The Sustainability Imperative: are CFOs ready to take charge?

With the emergence of sustainability-related legislation and the growing societal demands to address climate emergency, it is becoming important for companies to build a robust ESG strategy, using both financial and non-financial data.

In this session, sustainability expert and distinguished finance leaders came together to share their views on the increasing role of CFOs in driving sustainability agenda across the organization.

Summary of discussion:

ESG Reporting: measuring sustainability efforts

• ESG is no longer about what investors want but more about value creation and measuring the non-financial metrics. Moreover, ESG is beyond being merely a philanthropic exercise and should be integrated into the company’s business strategy.
• Key metrics and KPIs should be developed to monitor sustainability efforts. 
• There is a growing need to align customers’ and investors’ interests.

Role of finance teams and CFOs in ESG

• Finance should play a secondary or supporting role in defining metrics and bringing it into the mainstream agenda.
• CFOs fit the bill for driving sustainability in an organization since he understands metrices and ways to measure KPIs.

ESG reporting tools: a silver lining?

ESG reporting tools can come in handy in understanding and defining ESG metrics. However, they can be helpful only when organizations gain certain maturity and are able to successfully identify what to measure.

Driver of corporate sustainability: who should be at the helm?

CEO, CFO and CSO or Chief Strategy Officer – should work in tandem to deliver on ESG. In an ideal scenario, CEO should drive ESG reporting with the office of Finance in a supporting role (CEO-CFO combination) as CEO is uniquely positioned to monitor entire ESG spectrum end-to-end.