Corporate ResponsibilityExchange

Paul Rennison – London Stock Exchange

PROBLEM TO SOLVE

Started with research into the problem of “questionnaire fatigue” for companies

Companies on average receiving 7 questionnaires relating to CG,CSR etc pa

Average of 7 man days per month spent responding this stakeholder group

Realised there are information asymmetries that impact on the needs of institutions as well

Briefly: some of the research findings

Proportion of Repetition in Questionnaires

6%4%

19%

24%

37%

11%

0-10% 11-25% 26-50% 51-75% 76-90% 90-100%

• Questionnaires are found by the majority to be highly repetitive – over three-quarters

of respondents believe over 50% of the average questionnaire is a repetition of information

previously given

APPROACH

Developed a normalised set of questions which map across to the key codes, guidelines and questionnaires currently in use: CC, NAPF, ABI,, BITC, EIRiS, SAM, GRI, CDP

The core normalised question set needs to be supplemented by “balancing” questions from the agencies

Not seeking to set the CR agenda, just helping companies to report against it

Consultative and consensual: Steering Group comprising key stakeholders among companies, institutions and research agencies

THE QUESTION SETS

Schema will deliver a supra-questionnaire that captures 70 – 80 % of data requested by all

Schema also allows for non-core questions to be asked according to the code or agency involved

Schema also allows specific proprietary questions to be targeted to companies or sectors

We have a process and architecture that allows flexibility to co-opt new questions for emerging issues (e.g. obesity, OFR) and will be included via a ratification process

CRE Data Architecture

CRE SCHEMA

Defines both quantitative and qualitative non-financial datae.g. “CO2 emissions (tonnes)” vs. “Human Rights policy and declaration”

Allows definitions of alternative taxonomies for categorising the same CSR data

e.g. “Strategy, management and operations” or “Social, environmental, economic”

Defines common data types found within the CSR domaine.g. “Gas Emissions”, “Energy Consumption”, “Policy Document”

Time period and applicability data for apportioning and defining the relevance of data

e.g. “carbon emissions in Europe”, “child labour excluding sub-Saharan Africa”.

CRE SCHEMA

Allows definition of questionnaire sets, which provide a mechanism for manual but efficient capture of the data

this data does typically exist in a structured form in enterprise systems so must be recaptured

Standardised definitions of third-party requirements and ratings and their interrelationships and redundancies

e.g. “this data fulfils the requirements of both Global Reporting Initiative EN12 and Carbon Disclosure Project Q4”

Reporting definitions and vocabulariesSupports the definition of reports (exceptions and aggregations) that

can be used during research and comparative analysis

CRE schema was designed initially as the enabler for a proprietary software application

However this underlying platform and data schema are open to all

It takes concepts and tenets of XBRL to ease future migration

The London Stock Exchange are engaged with the XBRL Consortia to evolve the CRE schema into an open set of XBRL taxonomies and extensions

Software tools will be made available to the corporate responsibility community to allow definition of new CSR data requirements and questionnaires

Migration to a XBRL based standard