“Nonetheless, it can be expected that these companies will have ESG risks, for example, particularly given the pandemic, workforce-related risks, or modern slavery risks that can be associated with healthcare supplies. However, despite being laggards, some progress demonstrates company awareness of investor expectations on ESG risks.”

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ACSI chief executive Louise Davidson said some organisations could fall into the trap of thinking they don’t have a big exposure to climate change and therefore their ESG risks are not as high. “But the range of ESG risks is much broader, of course, than just climate change,” she said.

“Healthcare, for example, is likely to have quite high ESG risk exposure to supply chain issues, for example, and I think we saw quite a bit of that play out over the pandemic. What we would really encourage companies to do is to think more broadly about what ESG risks they might be exposed to. So if it’s in healthcare, are you exposed to modern slavery risk, supply chain risk, and perhaps some workforce risk in terms of health and safety and burnout risk at this point in time?”

ACSI for the first time has released each company’s ESG rating in the report.

Twelve companies on the ASX 200 do not report at all, however ACSI noted that just over half were new to the index and therefore had not previously been considered for the project or had engagement with the council.

The research by ACSI assessed ESG disclosures for the ASX 200 to March 31 this year, analysing publicly available data such as ASX announcements, annual reports and other corporate reports. It doesn’t reflect a company’s performance on ESG issues, only its disclosure of them.

Most ASX 200 companies (64 per cent) report against the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals or use them to guide reporting, with climate action the most cited priority.

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