home
frankly speaking podcast

#44 Filip Gregor: How Should Companies Undertake a Materiality Assessment?

Listen to Filip Gregor, Head of Frank Bold’s Responsible Companies section and member of EFRAG’s Sustainability Reporting Board

In this Frankly Speaking episode, we explore how companies should undertake a materiality assessment when they tackle their sustainability report. The concept of materiality is derived from financial accounting in business and human rights, and very simply asks the question: does this information matter?

To guide us, we welcome back ⁠Filip Gregor⁠, head of ⁠Frank Bold’s Responsible Companies section⁠ and member of EFRAG’s Sustainability Reporting Board, which draws up and recommends the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS).

In this episode, you’ll hear more about: 

  • How materiality is done in the ESRS and what does double materiality mean
  • How companies should start to think about assessing and measuring impact materiality
  • The logic behind the "traffic light" system for risk assessment in ⁠EFRAG's draft guidance on Materiality Assessment⁠
  • Filip’s advice to companies that want to better understand financial materiality
  • What is the role of the stakeholder in relation to the materiality question

“The most fundamental change is that the EU Sustainability Reporting Standards require companies to apply specific criteria for assessing impacts and specific criteria for assessing financial effects. Those criteria are not opinions of their stakeholders. So when it comes to the impact, those criteria are the same as the criteria for the salient human rights issues, being the severity and likelihood of actual, respectively, potential impacts for the financial relevance, sustainability related risks and opportunities. Those are the criteria of the magnitude of financial effects on the company and the likelihood. That’s the most important one there.“

Filip Gregor in Frankly Speaking

You may also like these episodes

34:25

#38 Nele Meyer: EU Due Diligence Rules Unpicked and Predictions for 2024

Listen to Nele Meyer, director of the European Coalition for Corporate Justice European network of NGOs which undertake advocacy on issues of corporate accountability.

33:04

#37 Maria Mendiluce: An Inside View of COP28 - What Are the Implications for Business?

Listen to Maria Mendiluce, CEO of the We Mean Business Coalition and one 2023 world’s top 100 Climate leaders.

38:58

#36 Caroline Rees: Does Corporate Sustainability Reporting Really Make a Difference?

Listen to Caroline Rees, President and co-Founder of Shift, the leading center of expertise on the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.