#116 Simon Rawson: Is Inequality a Risk to Business? Inside the TISFD Framework

The Taskforce on Inequality and Social-related Financial Disclosures (TISFD) wants to do for social issues what the TCFD did for climate a decade ago: harness capital markets to drive corporate action, this time on inequality and people-related risk.

With its beta framework now open for public consultation (deadline 31 July 2026), host Richard Howitt sits down with TISFD Executive Director Simon Rawson to ask the hard questions:

Can financial value really be assigned to fundamental human rights?
Does the framework take a single or double materiality approach?
With regulators like the ISSB and the EU (through CSRD/ESRS) seemingly retreating from ambitious social reporting requirements, is TISFD swimming against the tide?

Rawson explains how the framework builds on (rather than duplicates) existing initiatives like the World Benchmarking Alliance, GRI, and Social Value International, and why the taskforce insists that human rights, social capital, and wellbeing paradigms must operate side by side rather than substitute for one another. He also shares which companies (including Coca-Cola and Airbus) have already joined the TISFD alliance, how a market-led approach helped TCFD win its case for climate disclosure, and what he learned from his own career path (from British diplomat in Pakistan to NGO campaigner to task force leader) about what's really at stake for informal and vulnerable workers on the ground.

Listen to this conversation about whether business can be convinced that people, not just the planet, belong on the balance sheet of risk.