PwC survey: Companies aren’t ready for CSRD reporting but say they will be

Almost two-thirds (63%) of companies say they are confident they will be ready to report under the European Union’s new Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, but their optimism is stymied by several obstacles to implementation.

PricewaterhouseCoopers’ 2024 Global CSRD Survey, released Thursday, surveyed more than 500 senior executives and business professionals. It found that despite high levels of confidence in anticipated readiness to report, respondents cited data availability and quality (59%), value chain complexity (57%) and staff capacity (50%) as significant hurdles.

“As the CSRD essentially requires sustainability reporting to be on par with financial reporting, leading executives are recognizing that sustainability information must be available, accurate, and audit-ready: not just on a one-time basis, but annually.” PwC Germany’s global reporting leader Nadja Picard said in a statement. “The global impact of CSRD shows the importance of getting to a global baseline of reporting standards to reduce complexity and improve comparability.”

The CSRD, established in January 2023, requires companies to report their environmental, social and governance performance in the 2024 fiscal year by providing data on things like emission, energy use, diversity and labor rights. The legislation imposes a new level of accountability to roughly 50,000 E.U.-based companies and 30% of U.S. companies with operations in Europe.

The survey also found that despite higher levels of confidence for companies due to report in six months time, less than half have completed key activities such as confirmation of reporting options (39%), double materiality assessment (38%) and validation of availability of data (20%). 

But the perceived long-term impact of CSRD is largely positive: 76% believe CSRD will lead to company leadership increasing consideration of sustainability in decision making, benefit their company through environmental performance (51%), improve engagement with stakeholders (49%) and risk mitigation (48%).

“Our survey shows leading companies are increasingly embedding sustainability into their decision making,” PwC U.K.’s global sustainability leader Will Jackson-Moore said in a statement. “Through the implementation of CSRD, they are expecting strong environmental benefits, better risk mitigation and improved engagement with stakeholders. We’re also seeing companies that are further along in their CSRD journey expecting greater overall benefits from its implementation. In particular, those that are closer to their reporting deadline see much greater financial benefits such as access to capital, revenue growth and cost savings than those due to report in later years.”