ASSURANCE OF SUSTAINABILITY REPORTING
Gain Stakeholders’ Trust And Enhance Your Company’s Reputation

In recent years, Environmental Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) have risen
to the forefront of company concerns. Increases in CSR investment, scrutiny of corporate governance and a greater demand for transparency have meant that Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainable Development issues have gained a firm place in the agenda’s of Boards and senior management worldwide.
New legislation and voluntary standards are continually introduced to ensure that companies are made accountable for their impact on the environment and society. Openly communicating this accountability to stakeholders can build trust and support, but only if stakeholders are confident that the information accurately represents the company’s environmental, social and ethical performance.

Gain Stakeholders’ Trust And Enhance Your Company’s ReputationWorking with an independent body provides an objective view of your sustainability reporting and reassures stakeholders that the information is accurate and free of bias. Beyond verifying report data, independent assurance also ensures that the right kind of information is communicated. As each company’s sustainability strategy is unique, Bureau Veritas Certification deliver tailored and robust assurance solutions that reflect each client’s individual needs.

The result is legitimate and credible sustainability reporting, which enables internal and external stakeholders to confidently make informed judgments, decisions and actions.

OUR APPROACH

Bureau Veritas Certification provides a portfolio of assurance solutions that can be tailored to the clients’
unique reporting needs. We have combined our experience with leading reporting companies and best practices in independent assurance to develop three levels of assurance:

1. Basic Verification focuses on the accuracy of information reported by the client. This methodology applies a more limited assurance technique while still helping organisations demonstrate transparency and accountability.

2. Medium Assurance assesses the overall quality of information in a broader sense, including its accuracy but also looking at other established parameters, such as accessibility, balance, clarity, comparability, reliability and timeliness.

3. Advanced Assurance addresses the same objectives as the Basic Verification and Medium Assurance, but it additionally evaluates the overall quality and content of a sustainability report against a set of best practice criteria, namely Materiality, Completeness, Responsiveness and Stakeholder Inclusiveness. This involves an additional assessment of the reporting organisation’s underlying management systems, processes and competencies. It is designed to ensure that clients are addressing material issues and concerns raised by key stakeholders.