ESG has been, and will continue to be, an evolutionary journey. Issuers have to continuously learn and improve in order to meet stakeholders' increasing expectations. To encourage peer learning and modelling, we sought to highlight good ESG practices adopted by some of our issuers in this section. The focus areas, namely (i) board and governance, (ii) materiality assessment, (iii) climate change and TCFD, (iv) stakeholder engagement and (v) social issues, align with the focus in our 2019 ESG consultation, and are selected with reference to major international sustainability reporting frameworks and feedback from stakeholders.
Mandating climate-related disclosures aligned with the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) framework by 2025 across relevant sectors is one of the priorities of the Green and Sustainable Finance Cross-Agency Steering Group. Against this backdrop, we will prioritise board governance and climate-related disclosures when reviewing our ESG reporting regime going forward.
The examples are selected based on inputs from the SFC's Public Shareholders Group, the Hong Kong Institute of Certified Public Accountants and feedback received in our stakeholders' engagement. Not all of the examples are relevant for all companies and all circumstances, and issuers should not “copy and paste” the language in their reports to avoid boilerplate language and ineffective reporting that lacks substance and meaningful information. Each example provides an illustration of where the company has thought about and demonstrates how to enhance the value of their disclosures. Highlighting aspects of good reporting by a particular entity should not be considered as an evaluation of that entity's report as a whole. The examples are intended to serve as a conduit to highlight good practice, and push for further improvements in the quality and usefulness of disclosures.
We will update the focus areas and examples from time to time to reflect the latest ESG regulatory concerns and developments, as well as potential improvement areas for our issuers' ESG practices.