How APAC’s 100 compare on ESG reporting
CSRone, as a trusted source for benchmarking and understanding the state of CSR/ESG reporting among Taiwanese and APAC’s largest corporations, features a comprehensive analysis and comparison among the reporting efforts from APAC’s top 100 corporations and tells that South Korea leads the pack for a second year in a row, Thailand climbs up to second place and Taiwan increases its performance.
For eight years in a row, CSRone, a leading CSR think tank & consultancy firm based in Taiwan, has published its annual research “Taiwan and APAC Sustainability Reports Analysis 2020”. This year marks the 8th edition of CSRone’s state-of-the-art research, which has become a trusted source for benchmarking and understanding the state of CSR/ESG reporting among Taiwanese and APAC’s largest corporations.
This is the second year the report features a comprehensive analysis and comparison among the reporting efforts from APAC’s top 100 corporations from the following economies: Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand. Based on overall results, the top 5 countries are (raking as follows): South Korea, Thailand, Australia, Taiwan, Singapore.
This year the research team is delighted to announce that Taiwan’s top ten corporations stand out in SDG reporting demonstrating the commitment and efforts of Taiwan to link its connectivity to the international community, as well as the achievements of the Taiwanese government-led initiative #TaiwanCanHelp. Regarding the analysis of other indicators, the research team found out that in terms of reporting ‘energy savings and carbon emissions reductions’ is the issue that APAC’s 100 corporations pay the most attention to and that ‘human rights’ lags behind as a reporting issue.
This analysis is product from a collaboration between CSRone and National ChengChi University (NCCU) SinYi Business School and has obtained long-standing support by PwC in Taiwan’s Sustainability Services Corporation and Taiwan Institute for Sustainable Energy (TAISE). The research period lasted 8 months, and comprised of a team of 23 researchers whom analyzed 642 sustainability in total reports (556 Taiwanese reports, and 86 APAC reports) across 846 ESG indicators.
Our team analyzed the published information from the ten largest corporations of ten selected APAC economies as listed on the prestigious Forbes Global 2000 list published in 2019 (For a full list of companies please refer to the Annex 2). As part of our review of publicly available information, we focused on analyzing the information published by APAC 100 corporations across 8 ESG themes (corporate governance, employee caring, energy savings and carbon emissions reductions, human rights, SDGs, social investment, training & education and waste management).
To score companies on the 8 major themes, we used a 1-5 scale. Scores were awarded based on the following ascending scale of reporting on management level of involvement.
- The corporation makes a mention about the theme.
- The corporation discloses a specific project or initiative on the theme.
- The company discloses its annual or year-on-year performance.
- The company discloses a public time-bound target or goal.
- The company discloses a specific plan to improve performance or attain a specific goal.
Key finding 1. What the ESG reporting of APAC’s top 100 corporations tell us about each country: South Korea leads the pack for a second year in a row, Thailand climbs up to second place and Taiwan increases its performance.
According to the research team, the following 5 economies are the best performers: South Korea (3.73), Thailand (3.73), Australia (3.63), Taiwan (3.50), Singapore (3.34). Eight of the ten economies improved their performance compared to last year. Only Hong Kong (2.78) and China (2.69) scored lower than last year. South Korean corporations are the most consistent in having a strong performance across the eight themes. Thailand (2nd place) corporations demonstrated leadership across 5 themes and led in terms of performance improvement of 0.7 points compared to last year, followed by Taiwan with a performance improvement of 0.47 points.
| Comparison of APAC 10 economies | ||
| FY2019 performance | FY2018 performance | Year-on-year comparison |
| 1. SK 3.73 | 1. SK 3.36 | 1. TH + 0.72 |
| 2. TH 3.63 | 2. SG 3.06 | 2. TW + 0.47 |
| 3. AU 3.55 | NA | 3. JP + 0.41 |
| 4. TW 3.50 | 3. TW 3.03 | 4. SK + 0.37 |
| 5. SG 3.34 | 4. TH 2.91 | 5. MY + 0.32 |
| 6. JP 3.04 | 5. HK 2.86 | 6. SG + 0.28 |
| 7. MY 2.89 | 6. CH 2.81 | 7. IN + 0.07 |
| 8. HK 2.78 | 7. JP 2.63 | 8. HK - 0.08 |
| 9. CH 2.69 | 8. MY 2.57 | 9. CH – 0.12 |
| 10. IN 2.41 | 9. IN 2.34 | 10. NA |
Acronym: AU: Australia (This year Australia was first included as part of the research scope), CH: China, HK: Hong Kong, IN: India, JP: Japan, MY: Malaysia, SG: Singapore, SK: South Korea, TW: Taiwan and TH: Thailand | Source: Taiwan and APAC Sustainability Reports Analysis 2020
Key finding 2. Taiwan stands out in SDG reporting
The United Nations officially implemented the Agenda 2030 and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in January 1st, 2016. This has opened the door to new challenges and opportunities for businesses, as these 17 global goals and its 169 targets represent our common global challenges and serve as a global communication language.
The research team found that Taiwan’s top ten corporations are leading in terms of SDG reporting with a score of 3.4 . This finding demonstrated that despite the current international relations limitations faced by Taiwan, Taiwan continues to seek ways to integrate its activities with the international arena and convey the aspiration promoted by the government-led campaign #TaiwanCanHelp. In addition, several Taiwanese companies published their first SDG report and manual as part of their support and contribution to the global agenda.
Key finding 3. Energy savings and carbon emissions reductions is the most prioritized issue among corporates
Climate change continues to increasingly receive attention and responses by corporations, as the number of reporting regulations and requirements continues to increase around the region. Many multi-national organizations and financial institutions continue to divest in fossil fuel related operations and investments.
The research team found that energy savings and carbon emissions reductions is the most prioritized issue among corporates is the most prioritized theme across the 8 themes with an average score of 3.76. The top ten corporations from South Korea (4.60), Thailand (4.50), and Japan (4.00) are leading the pack in terms of oversight and management on this issue.
CSRone pointed out that the APAC region is an important region as many of its companies serve as suppliers for global corporations and its geographical location makes APAC companies more vulnerable to climate-related physical risks such as extreme weather events. This leads to APAC corporations to pay particular attention to these issues and include them as part of their reporting cycles. Moreover, among CDP’s Global Climate A-List, in 2019 51 companies out of 181 listed are Asian companies. This fact is consistent with our research finding.
Key finding 4. Human Rights reporting lags behind compared to other ESG themes
Same as last year’s the average score for ‘Human rights’ was 2.46 among APAC economies. The top three countries with the highest performance are Australia and South Korea (both scored 3.50), Taiwan (3.30), Thailand (3.00), and the bottom three countries with the lowest performance are India (1.80), Malaysia (1.78) and China (0.90).
In view of the emerging threat posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, CSRone responded rapidly and moved its international annual conference and report launch into an online format. The webinar was hosted under the theme 'Sustain a head start in an uncertain world: redefine the next decade' and over received participation from over 500 attendees around the world demonstrating the strong interest in sustainability during these times.
Annex 1. Average scores by theme and country
Annex 1. Average scores by theme and country
| Average scores by theme and country | |||||||||||
| Country/territory | Taiwan | China | Japan | India | Hong Kong | ||||||
| Year | 2019 | 2018 | 2019 | 2018 | 2019 | 2018 | 2019 | 2018 | 2019 | 2018 | |
| Theme | Energy savings and carbon emissions reductions | 3.90 | 4.00 | 3.30 | 3.20 | 4.00 | 3.80 | 2.80 | 3.00 | 3.13 | 3.44 |
| Corporate Governance | 3.60 | 3.20 | 3.20 | 3.10 | 2.67 | 3.00 | 2.10 | 2.60 | 3.13 | 3.67 | |
| Training & education | 3.30 | 3.20 | 3.30 | 3.30 | 3.33 | 2.60 | 2.50 | 2.80 | 3.13 | 3.44 | |
| Employee caring | 3.40 | 2.70 | 3.20 | 3.00 | 3.11 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 1.80 | 2.88 | 3.00 | |
| Social investment | 3.60 | 3.10 | 3.30 | 3.80 | 3.11 | 2.90 | 2.60 | 2.60 | 3.00 | 3.11 | |
| Waste management | 3.50 | 2.80 | 3.00 | 3.20 | 2.78 | 2.20 | 2.60 | 2.60 | 3.25 | 3.11 | |
| Human rights | 3.30 | 2.50 | 0.90 | 1.30 | 2.44 | 2.70 | 1.80 | 1.80 | 2.00 | 1.78 | |
| SDGs | 3.40 | 2.70 | 1.30 | 1.60 | 2.89 | 1.30 | 2.40 | 1.50 | 1.75 | 1.33 | |
| Average scores by theme and country | |||||||||||
| Country/territory | Thailand | Malaysia | Singapore | Australia | South Korea | ||||||
| Year | 2019 | 2018 | 2019 | 2018 | 2019 | 2018 | 2019 | 2018 | 2019 | 2018 | |
| Theme | Energy savings and carbon emissions reductions | 4.50 | 3.30 | 3.44 | 3.33 | 4.00 | 3.90 | 3.90 | NA | 4.60 | 3.80 |
| Corporate Governance | 3.60 | 3.30 | 2.78 | 3.11 | 3.10 | 2.70 | 3.70 | 3.80 | 3.20 | ||
| Training & education | 3.30 | 3.40 | 3.44 | 3.22 | 3.40 | 3.40 | 3.60 | 3.60 | 3.30 | ||
| Employee caring | 4.10 | 2.20 | 3.20 | 2.89 | 3.40 | 2.60 | 3.70 | 3.60 | 3.20 | ||
| Social investment | 3.80 | 2.80 | 3.33 | 2.89 | 3.80 | 2.90 | 3.80 | 3.90 | 3.40 | ||
| Waste management | 4.00 | 3.20 | 2.78 | 2.22 | 3.40 | 3.30 | 3.70 | 3.90 | 3.60 | ||
| Human rights | 3.00 | 2.90 | 1.78 | 1.33 | 2.40 | 2.60 | 3.50 | 3.50 | 3.10 | ||
| SDGs | 2.70 | 2.20 | 2.33 | 1.56 | 3.20 | 3.10 | 2.50 | 2.90 | 3.30 | ||
Source: Taiwan and APAC Sustainability Reports Analysis 2020
Annex 2. APAC 100 corporation (the top ten corporations from 10 APAC economies)
| List of top 10 largest public corporations for each APAC country/territory | |||||
| Order | Taiwan | Japan | China | Hong Kong | India |
| 1 | Hon Hai Precision | Toyota Motor | ICBC | China Mobile | Reliance Industries |
| 2 | Taiwan Semiconductor | Softbank | China Construction Bank | CITIC | HDFC Bank |
| 3 | Cathay Financial | Mitsubishi UFJ Financial | Agricultural Bank of China | AIA Group | Oil & Natural Gas |
| 4 | Fubon Financial | Nippon Telegraph & Tel | Ping An Insurance Group | CNOOC | Indian Oil |
| 5 | CTBC Financial | Japan Post Holdings | Bank of China | CK Hutchison | HDFC |
| 6 | Formosa Petrochemical | Sumitomo Mitsui Financial | PetroChina | China Unicom | Tata Consultancy Services |
| 7 | Formosa Chemicals | Sony | China Merchants Bank | China Resources Land | ICICI Bank |
| 8 | Nan Ya Plastics | Honda Motor | Sinopec | Jardine Matheson | Larsen & Toubro |
| 9 | Formosa Plastics | Mitsubishi | Bank of Communications | Sun Hung Kai Properties | State Bank of India |
| 10 | China Steel | Mizuho Financial | Industrial Bank | CK Asset Holdings | NTPC |
| List of top 10 largest public corporations for each APAC country/territory | |||||
| No | Singapore | Malaysia | Thailand | Australia | South Korea |
| 1 | DBS | Maybank | PTT PCL | Commonwealth Bank | Samsung Electronics |
| 2 | Oversea-Chinese Banking | Tenaga Nasional | Siam Commercial Bank | Westpac Banking Group | SK Hynix |
| 3 | United Overseas Bank | Public Bank | Siam Cement | BHP Group | Hyundai Motor |
| 4 | SingTel | CIMB Group Holdings | Kasikorn bank | ANZ | KB Financial Group |
| 5 | Wilmar International | Petronas Chemicals | Bangkok Bank | NAB - National Australia Bank | Shinhan Financial Group |
| 6 | CapitaLand | RHB Bank | PTT Global Chemical | Macquarie Group | SK Holdings |
| 7 | Singapore Airlines | Hong Leong Financial | CP All | Telstra | Posco |
| 8 | Keppel | Axiata Group | Krung Thai Bank | Woolworths | Samsung Life Insurance |
| 9 | Olam International | AmBank Group | Thai Beverage | Wesfarmers | Hyundai Mobis |
| 10 | Flex | 從缺 | Indorama Ventures | Suncorp Group | Samsung C&T |
Source: Forbes Global 2000 List 2019
Photo credit to : Stephen Dawson
