Niklas Letmathe

2024

This paper provides an empirical analysis of sustainability reports published by some of the world’s largest banks over the past decade. The reports are analyzed in terms of completeness in the area of environment, social, and governance (ESG). I aim to identify the changes in the extent of disclosure by the banking sector and the current status of sustainability reporting. The analysis is done using a criteria catalog with an integrated scoring system. While banks did improve their sustainability reporting disclosure by a large amount between 2014 and 2022, there is still a lot of room left for further improvements, especially in the disclosure of environmental and governance information. Additionally, this paper investigates the regional differences in banks’ sustainability reporting. Sustainability reporting quality is found to be significantly higher for American and European banks in the area of environment and governance. There are no significant differences found in the area of social disclosure.