What business needs to know about materiality

Judy Kuszewski, chief executive of Sancroft, and Toby Webb from Innovation Forum debate approaches to corporate materiality. Kuszewski outlines the results of Sancroft’s recent research – Towards a new materiality – into FTSE100 companies. She argues that practices around materiality appear not to have evolved very far over the past 10 years, and that companies should focus more on linking materiality and risk. And for investors, companies should consider demonstrably integrating material issues into their strategy, to show that they have identified risk and opportunity effectively.