Aktia's 8-week double materiality assessment: Preparing a global asset manager for CSRD

Starting point: Double Materiality Assessment for an extensive investment portfolio

In 2023, the sustainability team at Aktia, the prominent Finnish asset manager, bank, and life insurer, closely followed evolving CSRD regulations, foreseeing the pivotal role of double materiality assessment as the foundation of the new regulatory mandate.

Recognizing the extensive nature of Aktia's global investment portfolio – spanning across nearly every industry and encompassing thousands of companies and their value chains – they quickly realized that relying solely on internal resources and manual efforts would prove laborious and time-consuming. External assistance was needed to ensure a comprehensive and efficient assessment.

Our main objective was to ensure that the assessment covers all facets of Aktia’s exposure. While evaluating our internal operations proved a relatively easy task, extending the assessment to cover also our investment portfolio and loan portfolio was a more complex challenge.

Markus LindqvistSustainability Director, Aktia

Solution: A data-driven assessment validated with stakeholder views

With years of experience in using Upright’s net impact data to evaluate and report on the externalities of their investment portfolio, it was logical and convenient for Aktia to utilize Upright’s data-driven approach to conduct their double materiality assessment (DMA).

The whole process took approximately 8 weeks including kickoff, data point collection, mid-review of preliminary results, and final meeting where the final results and the evidence for the conclusions were presented to Aktia’s team.

The output of the double materiality assessment included the following reports, validated later in the process with Aktia’s stakeholders:

• Final report with both impact and financial materiality status for all ESRS topics and relevant entity-specific topics
• Report detailing the methodology for assurance purposes
• List of relevant ESRS disclosure requirements based on the results.

Benefit: Readiness for CSRD reporting and visibility to material topics across value chain

By conducting a data-driven double materiality assessment, Aktia now has established a solid foundation, a clear roadmap, and a comprehensive plan on how to conduct CSRD reporting for the first time in 2024.

Markus Lindqvist, Aktia’s Sustainability Director, shares, “Science-based double materiality assessment gives us an external point of view without any emotional bonds or personal opinions. We can start the validation process with stakeholders now with objective data.”

In terms of reliability, Aktia recognizes the significant benefits of a data-driven approach, especially for players like them whose most material topics come indirectly through investments. A data-driven approach enables an assessment covering all facets of their exposure, including companies and their value chains within Aktia’s loan and investment portfolio.

Sustainability reporting specialist, Pauline Blechingberg-Kilpi, who recently joined Aktia is in charge of Aktia’s CSRD implementation.

“For a player like us, evaluating material topics throughout the whole value chain in a reliable and credible manner using qualitative methods would have been really challenging and time-consuming – and most likely too subjective,” Blechingberg-Kilpi concludes.

Read more about Upright's CSRD solution.