Another year is upon us and, more importantly, so is the apex of another reporting season. Santa clearly didn’t read the project timeline when he stuck a holiday in the middle of reporting season, but that can all be forgotten now as it’s full steam ahead to key proof one.
Making predictions about how the reporting space might evolve this year is largely a fool’s errand (just ask any company that substantially invested in CSRD preparedness). But based on the conversations we’re having with clients, and the themes we see emerging, we are looking ahead at where we think the focuses will be for the coming year.
Moving past CSRD uncertainty…
2025 ended with the EU Parliament approving the Omnibus Agreement to cut sustainability reporting and due diligence requirements. Much has been written about whether this is a sensible scaling back of onerous reporting or a serious retreat from the EU’s overarching sustainability mission. Either way, it means companies can move beyond the uncertainty of whether they will have to comply with CSRD and CSDDD or not.
The vast majority of companies are no longer in scope and can instead focus on improving their reports and taking the positives from ESRS-based reporting. Expect to see more discussion of impacts, risks and opportunities, more policy discussion and more technical detail.
… but ISSB is still on the way
The gutting of CSRD doesn’t mean global businesses will escape mandatory sustainability reporting. Since the ISSB issued its first two global sustainability standards in 2023, many jurisdictions around the world have stated their intention to adopt the standards or align with them.
In the UK, the UK Sustainability Reporting Standards (UK SRS) are still being developed, with further updates due in early 2026. They are being created based on the ISSB framework to provide investors with consistent, comparable information regarding sustainability-related risks and opportunities. They are likely to require companies to disclose a greater breadth and depth of sustainability information, including climate climate-related disclosures. The standards will likely apply to UK listed companies, large UK registered private companies and large limited liability partnerships.
More work needed for widespread value chain targets
Although CSRD is going away for many, the scope of reporting – along with the scrutinising eyes of your stakeholders – is still focused on your whole value chain. Fully understanding impacts, risks and opportunities across the whole value chain remains a key challenge for many organisations, as evidenced by the widespread lack of Scope 3 emissions targets. That is a hurdle companies are going to have to overcome as the end of the decade begins to loom large.
In our reporting projects, we have seen this manifest in the challenge of surfacing stories from across the value chain, and balancing the need for high level strategic direction with enough granular detail to substantiate claims.
AI use in report writing and analysis
Businesses are increasingly embedding AI in their reporting processes. AI can be a great help in gathering data gathering and providing ideas for wording, however, in report writing it potentially risks undermining the accuracy, authenticity and accountability of your most important piece of comms. When generating report content, AI tools must be carefully supervised to avoid your copy becoming cliched or inaccurate and risks suggesting that you are cutting corners when informing your stakeholders.
With AI report scraping tools also on the rise, it’s important that companies understand how different AI tools are trying to find your information. We’re seeing many companies bring information out of their PDF reports onto dedicated HTML microsites to ensure AI tools can find what investors and analysts are looking for.
Reporting suites continue to evolve
As sustainability content has exploded and each topic has grown in importance, reporting suites have gotten a little out of control. Though the CSRD looked like it was going to bring the bulk of the sustainability story back into the annual report, the technical nature of a CSRD disclosure meant it seemed unlikely to fully remove the need for a separate user-friendly sustainability report. Websites also remain an underused channel for evergreen report content, and reporters will have to consider how best to reach different segments of their audience.
Many of our clients are stepping back to look at their reporting suite overall, looking for opportunities to streamline or consolidate, and considering whether they are making the best use of the communication channels available to them. This is welcome news to us, as we have long believed that expecting one report to achieve multiple communication objectives is sometimes a path paved with good intentions but to questionable effect.
