Reporting and Assessment survey - Overview

Overview | Results

Principle six of the PRI asks each signatory to 'report on their activities and progress towards implementing the Principles'. One of the main tools used to support signatories in their implementation of this Principle is the PRI's annual Reporting & Assessment survey. This is an annual online questionnaire for PRI asset owner and investment manager signatories. The Preview of Question gives brief overview of what the survey entails. More detailed information on the content and the procedure can be found in the User Manual and the Offline Survey (Questions, answer options and notes).

The PRI is a voluntary and aspirational framework, however participation in this survey (after an optional one year grace period) is the one mandatory requirement for all signatories. Those signatories that do not fulfill this requirement will be publicly delisted from the Initiative.

Objectives and benefits of the survey

The PRI Reporting and Assessment survey serves a number of purposes:

• It is a learning tool. Signatories can monitor their organisations' progress in implementing the Principles. The process provides a detailed, principle-by-principle analysis of implementation, with peer comparisons, both locally and internationally, and, over time.
• It provides an opportunity for the PRI Secretariat to identify best practices, interesting developments and practical implementation ideas, and reflect these back to the signatory body through the case studies featured in this report, PRI in Practice articles on the PRI Intranet, the PRI in Person event and monthly webinars. It also helps the Secretariat to focus implementation support on the areas where signatories need most assistance.
• It serves as an accountability mechanism, both for signatories and the PRI Initiative as a whole.
• It provides an 'off-the-shelf' reporting framework that can be used by signatories to report to clients, beneficiaries, customers and the broader public on their responsible investment activities.

The process

Every year, usually in January or February, a signatory will receive an emailed invitation to participate in the Reporting and Assessment survey. The deadline for completion will be two months after this invitation has been sent out.

A subset of signatories, typically one third of those participating to the survey, are verified through one hour telephone calls by the PRI Secretariat and third party independent partners. These verification calls are intended as a two way conversation to both clarify the responses given and to enable a sharing of ideas on different approaches to ESG issues.

Once verification calls are completed all responses are aggregated to create the annual Report on Progress. Individual responses are confidential, however signatories are encouraged to publish their full individual responses on the PRI website. These responses are published on the PRI website. Both the aggregated reports and the published individual responses can be viewed in the Results webpage.

Finally, PRI signatories also receive an individual feedback report which highlights for each of the Principles their relative score compared to the other signatories against different sets of peer groups. These are confidential reports that signatories can use to review their internal ESG strength and weaknesses and find guidance for improvement.