The Investment Company Institute wants companies to provide more standardized ESG disclosure, the organization said Monday.
That disclosure should be consistent with recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures and Sustainability Accounting Standards Board standards, said ICI, whose members manage more than $34 trillion in assets globally.
ICI Chairman George C.W. Gatch, CEO of J.P. Morgan Asset Management, said in a statement that there is emerging global consensus on following those standards. "Fund managers require access to financially material ESG-related information from corporate issuers that is accurate, comparable, and timely," he said in the statement.
In 2017, the task force published formal recommendations to help companies provide disclosure related to climate-related risks and opportunities, and how they manage and measure them. SASB developed 77 industry-specific standards identifying financially material, decision-useful sustainability information and associated metrics.
The call for consistent ESG disclosure through the widely accepted frameworks "will help improve the quality and, ideally, the quantity of comparable ESG data. Moving in this direction should also aid policymakers in the United States and abroad as they consider action on ESG-related issues," Eric J. Pan, ICI president and CEO, said in the same statement.
ICI has also endorsed an ESG "road map" to help provide consistent communication on ESG investing.
