Sustainability information helps now companies understand exposure, test resilience and identify where value may be created, protected or put at risk. As volatility increases, poor data has a cost. It can affect investment choices, financing discussions, procurement decisions, risk assessment and stakeholder trust.
As the landscape evolves, organisations must prioritise integrating sustainability information into their core business processes, ensuring that data quality, governance, and accountability are embedded at every stage to respond to the risks related to technological disruption, climate change, demographic shifts, a fracturing world and social instability.
This is why boards, investors, lenders, customers, suppliers and rating agencies increasingly ask for reliable, complete and accurate data.
The practical reality in management decisions
Boards approve transformation investment. Lenders request climate indicators. Customers ask for value-chain data. Suppliers ask how third-party data fits into their own targets and reporting. Rating agencies challenge methodology. Then comes the CFO’s question: can we rely on these reported figures?
Sustainability information is no longer used only at year-end. It now feeds into financing discussions, supplier and client requests, risk assessment, capital allocation and resilience planning. That raises the standard that the information must be reliable before it reaches the annual report, because it is already being used to make decisions.
Why the debate becomes operational
CSRD, Omnibus, and additional regulatory developments continue to be pertinent, especially regarding scope, timing, and assurance requirements. However, the need for reliable sustainability information is increasingly influenced by how companies are financed, evaluated, sourced, and chosen as business partners.
PwC’s Global Sustainability Reporting Survey 2025 found that most companies reporting under CSRD and ISSB indicate that pressure to provide sustainability data and insights has increased, despite ongoing recalibration by some regulators.
We understand that the source of that pressure is increasingly commercial as well as regulatory: clients request carbon data, suppliers seek consistent information, banks ask for climate and transition indicators, investors assess performance and resilience, and rating agencies expect explanations, documentation and consistency.
Resilience depends on reliable information
Resilience is often discussed as a strategic ambition, but it depends on facts. A company cannot manage climate exposure, supply-chain disruption, workforce challenges, or transition risk with figures it cannot explain.
Megatrends affect companies in different ways. Climate change can put pressure on assets, operations, insurance costs and supply chains. Technological disruption changes business models and the speed at which information is produced and interpreted. Demographic shifts affect labour markets, skills and customer expectations, while a fracturing world can complicate trade routes, sourcing strategies and regulation. Social instability adds another layer, influencing operating environments, stakeholder trust and license to operate.
Resilience depends on the quality of that understanding. Incomplete supplier information, changing methodologies, undocumented assumptions or unclear ownership can all weaken management’s view of exposure. A company might be capable of generating a sustainability report; however, this does not necessarily indicate that its information is solid enough to guide decision-making.
What "assurance readiness" really reveals
The assurance challenge reveals areas for improvement in many companies. PwC’s Global Sustainability Reporting Survey 2025 revealed that 37% of companies who had already reported believed early involvement with an assurance practitioner would have improved readiness and avoid late surprises in the assurance process. Typical challenges include unclear ownership, inconsistent methodologies, missing evidence, reliance on manual spreadsheets, and late control design.
Assurance readiness distinguishes whether sustainability reporting is managed as a controlled process or simply approached as a data collection activity. In many organisations, sustainability data is sourced from various departments, including finance, human resources, procurement, operations, risk management, legal, information technology, and external providers. The absence of established protocols can result in reliance on individual efforts and spreadsheet-based tracking. Implementing robust governance structures ensures the process is repeatable, transparent, resilient, and delivers greater accuracy.
Investors are looking for substance
Investors are also looking for sustainability information that supports performance. PwC’s Global Investor Survey 2025 found that 61% of investors would at least moderately increase investment in companies using sustainability data for efficiency and performance and 84% believe companies should maintain or increase investment in climate adaptation.
This reinforces the fact that sustainability information has value when it helps explain how the business is managed. Investors want to understand whether companies are using sustainability data to improve efficiency, manage risk, adapt to change and protect long-term value.
The core point: value only comes with trust
Data creates value only when people trust it enough to use it. Many companies can produce ESG data but fewer can explain, consistently and with evidence, where it came from, who owns it, how it was calculated, what changed from the previous year and which controls were performed before it was published or shared externally.
Information that is well-defined, evidenced and controlled can be used with confidence, but the data that cannot be explained remains a reporting output, not a management tool.
The same logic applies to value-chain information. Companies will need to justify what they requested, what they received, what they estimated and why the approach is reasonable. For many businesses, value-chain data is where trust becomes commercial, because customers, suppliers and financiers are asking for information that affects procurement, financing, ratings and long-term partnerships.
Technology helps, but ownership matters
Technology can support data collection, workflow, controls, dashboards and documentation. AI can help move sustainability reporting from manual compilation towards embedded intelligence: identifying anomalies, supporting carbon accounting, comparing disclosures and helping users act on the information.
AI may also change how reports are read. Corporate disclosures are increasingly processed, compared and challenged at scale. That means inconsistencies, gaps and weak explanations may become more visible.
But technology will not replace ownership. If the underlying data is weak, AI will not fix the problem but it may simply accelerate it. An automated figure without a clear methodology, review trail and accountable owner is not decision-grade. It is just a faster figure or a potential mistake.
The question is therefore not only how to collect the data more efficiently. It is how to make the data reliable enough to use.
Conclusion
Regulation may change the timetable, but not the direction. Sustainability information is moving closer to financial and operational reporting and is increasingly embedded in business decisions.
Companies that prepare sustainability information with discipline will be better placed to earn trust, strengthen resilience and use the information in decisions. In a business environment shaped by megatrends and shifting value pools, trust is becoming a condition for decision-making.
An effective subsequent action is to evaluate data maturity and readiness at an early stage. Conducting a pre-assurance exercise prior to limited assurance enables organisations to thoroughly assess the maturity of their data, methodologies, controls, and supporting evidence, before disclosing sustainability information publicly and subjecting it to market scrutiny.
