As highlighted in the Sustainability and business — the call to action; build back better report, we have embarked on a thought leadership programme that explores accountancy and sustainability. This is part of a series of briefs exploring the topic of sustainability, business and the finance professional’s key role. These briefs will help organisations consider the sustainability issues, how to integrate them into their long-term decision-making, and how to incorporate these issues into internal and external reporting.

This paper is designed to present a summary of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) standard. It is written from the management accounting perspective. The paper answers four questions,

• What? Description of the SASB standard.
• How? Implementation of the SASB standard.
• Why? The purpose of the SASB standard and organisational impact.
• Who? Finance professional skills and competencies linked to the SASB standard.

As a finance professional, you are likely to encounter one or many of the sustainability frameworks and standards and We will continue to release papers summarising the major methodologies.

Finance professionals need to be taking a leading role. We can provide financial and non-financial reporting, explain risks and set strategy. The upcoming reports will explore these themes in greater detail.