KPMG ESG Assurance Maturity Index 2025: Global Findings and Corporate Readiness

What Is the KPMG ESG Assurance Maturity Index?

The ESG assurance maturity landscape is evolving rapidly as regulatory mandates, investor expectations, and stakeholder pressures converge on corporate sustainability reporting. The KPMG ESG Assurance Maturity Index 2025 represents the third annual edition of this comprehensive global benchmark, surveying 1,320 senior executives and board members with direct ESG reporting and assurance knowledge across industries and global regions. The participating companies carry a mean revenue of US$16.8 billion, providing a robust cross-section of how the world’s largest organizations approach sustainability assurance.

The index measures ESG assurance maturity across five weighted pillars: Governance (25%), Skills (25%), Data Management (25%), Digital Technology (15%), and Value Chain (10%). Each pillar is scored on a 0–100 scale based on detailed survey responses, with the weighted aggregate producing an overall maturity index score. Companies are then classified into three tiers: Leaders (top 25th percentile), Advancers (middle 50th percentile), and Beginners (bottom 25th percentile). This framework allows organizations to benchmark their ESG assurance readiness against global peers and identify specific areas requiring improvement.

The 2025 edition expanded its geographic coverage to include respondents from Africa, Mexico, and the Middle East for the first time, offering a more complete picture of global ESG assurance maturity. Research was conducted during April and May 2025, and the report also includes a focused analysis of 314 companies identified as CSRD Wave 1 reporters—those with financial years beginning on or after January 1, 2024. For professionals navigating complex regulatory landscapes, interactive tools like those explored in our EU AI Act compliance guide can help teams quickly internalize dense regulatory content.

ESG Assurance Maturity Scores: Leaders vs. Beginners

The 2025 results reveal a sobering reality: despite growing regulatory pressure and unprecedented stakeholder attention, global ESG assurance maturity has essentially flatlined. The overall average maturity index score stands at 46.77, actually declining from 47.7 in 2024. More concerning is that the gap between Leaders and Beginners has not narrowed—Leaders average 65.21 while Beginners score just 30.54, a spread of nearly 35 points that has persisted since the index’s inception.

This bifurcation is not simply a matter of resources. While larger organizations with revenue exceeding US$10 billion achieve an average score of 52.80 compared to 40.44 for firms under US$1 billion, the Leader-Beginner divide cuts across size categories. Among Leaders, 57% of companies with revenue exceeding US$10 billion report that ESG targets are fully operationalized and monitored. For Beginners, this figure drops dramatically. The data suggests that ESG assurance maturity is driven less by company size and more by deliberate strategic commitment, governance structures, and digital infrastructure investments.

The Advancers tier—representing the middle 50% of companies—scores 45.73 on average, creating what KPMG describes as a “frozen middle” that is neither falling behind nor catching up with Leaders. Breaking through this plateau requires concentrated investment across all five pillars simultaneously, as incremental improvements in any single area rarely shift the overall maturity score by more than a few points. Understanding these complex benchmarking dynamics through interactive presentations rather than static PDFs can transform how leadership teams absorb and act on such data, as we discuss in our analysis of global sustainability reporting trends.

Regional ESG Assurance Maturity Rankings

The geographic distribution of ESG assurance maturity reveals important strategic implications for multinational organizations. North America retains the top position with a score of 49.01, but the headline story is Europe’s dramatic convergence. European companies now score 48.87—nearly closing a gap that was considerably wider in previous editions. This acceleration is directly attributable to the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), which has compelled European firms to formalize their ESG reporting and assurance processes at an unprecedented pace.

Asia Pacific follows at 46.70, with regulators identified as a major driving force alongside growing investor pressure. The newly surveyed African market enters at 45.30, an encouraging score that places it above both the Middle East (42.38) and Latin America (39.98). Notably, the drivers of ESG assurance maturity differ by region: while regulators dominate in Europe and ASPAC, external activists and local communities play a proportionally larger role in Africa, reflecting the continent’s unique stakeholder dynamics around resource extraction and community impact.

Latin America’s position at the bottom of the regional rankings is partly structural—many economies in the region lack mandatory ESG reporting frameworks, and capital markets pressure remains less intense than in North America or Europe. However, this also represents an opportunity: as Latin American regulators begin adopting ISSB standards, early movers in the region could establish significant competitive advantages in attracting international investment.

How CSRD Is Accelerating ESG Assurance Adoption

The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive represents the most significant regulatory catalyst for ESG assurance maturity globally. Among the 314 CSRD Wave 1 reporters analyzed in the 2025 index, 54% now publish ESG disclosures within their annual report rather than as a separate document—a practice that signals deeper integration of sustainability into core business reporting. Of these, 23% have adopted fully integrated annual reports that explain how ESG factors affect enterprise value, while 31% maintain a dedicated ESG section within the annual report.

CSRD’s influence extends beyond reporting format. Wave 1 reporters demonstrate measurably higher engagement with their supply chains: 52% place broad ESG requirements on suppliers that are actively monitored, compared to 48% of non-CSRD reporters. The directive’s double materiality requirement—demanding assessment of both the company’s impact on society and society’s impact on the company—has forced organizations to develop more sophisticated data collection and governance frameworks than simple compliance would require.

The assurance uptake numbers are perhaps the most striking indicator of CSRD’s impact. Across the full sample, 65% of firms obtained limited or reasonable assurance over some ESG disclosures in 2025, up dramatically from 50% in 2024. Nearly 80% of companies obtaining assurance chose an audit firm as their assurance provider, reflecting both regulatory preferences and the growing convergence between financial and sustainability auditing capabilities. Only 2% of surveyed companies report obtaining no external ESG assurance at all—a figure that was significantly higher just two years ago.

The five key lessons emerging from CSRD Wave 1 reporters are instructive for all companies approaching mandatory ESG assurance. First, more than a year of preparation was typically needed to achieve readiness. Second, securing a senior board-level sponsor proved critical for breaking down functional silos. Third, companies needed to capture entirely new metrics—from substances of concern to biodiversity-sensitive site proximity to gender pay gaps. Fourth, many organizations underestimated the complexity of retrospective data collection for first-year reporting. Fifth, early engagement with assurance providers during the preparation phase (not after reporting) significantly improved outcomes.

ESG Governance and Board-Level Engagement

Governance emerges as both the most heavily weighted pillar (25%) and the area where the Leader-Beginner divide is most pronounced. Among Leaders, 95% of boards take moderate to extensive responsibility for determining the impact of ESG on business value, compared to just 62% of Beginners. Similarly, 89% of Leader boards actively review ESG reporting versus 62% of Beginners, and 87% monitor ESG performance compared to 56%.

Meeting frequency tells an equally important story. Two-thirds of Leader organizations convene their boards at least quarterly to discuss ESG matters, while less than half of Beginners do so. This frequency differential enables Leaders to maintain strategic momentum, respond to regulatory changes in near real-time, and ensure that ESG commitments translate into operational action rather than remaining aspirational statements in annual reports.

Stakeholder pressure continues to be a primary driver of governance engagement. Regulators remain the dominant force (69% of respondents cite regulatory pressure in 2025, stable from 70% in 2024), but the audit committee has emerged as a significant internal driver at 57%. External investor and shareholder pressure holds steady at 53%, while financial markets pressure has risen from 37% in 2023 to 52% in 2025—the most significant increase of any stakeholder category. Perhaps most remarkable is the trajectory of local community pressure, which has accelerated more than sixfold from just 3% in 2023 to 26% in 2025, reflecting heightened public awareness of corporate environmental and social impacts.

The challenge of complexity is growing alongside governance ambitions. The proportion of companies citing complexity of reporting requirements as a barrier rose from 41% in 2024 to 51% in 2025. Unclear and evolving regulations increased similarly from 41% to 49%. Critically, 59% of Leaders—not Beginners—cite unclear regulations as a challenge, suggesting that more mature organizations are grappling with the frontiers of ESG compliance rather than its basics.

Building ESG Assurance Skills and Workforce Capacity

The Skills pillar (25% weight) captures organizations’ ability to build and maintain the human capital needed for credible ESG assurance. The 2025 data shows meaningful progress among Leaders: 37% have now completed establishing a skilled ESG team, more than doubling from 19% the previous year. However, the broader picture remains challenging—only 13% of Beginners have reached mid-implementation, and a mere 2% have fully established their ESG teams.

Across the full sample, more than half of firms now report mid or full implementation of ESG teams, up from 44% in 2023. This upward trajectory is encouraging but masks significant variation. Organizations with revenue above US$25 billion invest substantially more in structured training: 18% provide mandatory training with knowledge checks throughout the year, compared to just 10% of smaller firms. Meanwhile, 30% of larger organizations offer optional ESG training regularly through the year, and 29% combine optional and mandatory programs.

The training delivery model also differentiates Leaders from Beginners. Among Leaders, 68% conduct some level of mandatory ESG training, compared to only 8% of Beginners. Furthermore, 57% of Leaders engage a combination of internal staff and external training bodies, recognizing that internal expertise alone cannot keep pace with the rapidly evolving regulatory and methodological landscape. External training partners bring specialized knowledge on frameworks like ESRS (European Sustainability Reporting Standards), ISSB, and sector-specific guidance that few organizations can develop entirely in-house.

The skills gap is not just about technical ESG knowledge. Organizations also need professionals who can bridge the gap between sustainability subject matter expertise and assurance methodology—individuals who understand both the science behind emissions calculations and the audit procedures needed to verify them. This dual competency requirement is creating intense competition for talent, particularly in Europe where CSRD compliance timelines leave little room for gradual capability building.

ESG Data Management and Quality Controls

Data management, also weighted at 25%, is where the rubber meets the road for ESG assurance maturity. Companies are capturing more metrics than ever: the average number of ESG metrics captured internally rose to 9.7 in 2025 from 9.3 in 2024 and 7.6 in 2023. External reporting has followed a similar trajectory, with an average of 5.5 metrics reported externally in 2025, up from 5.0 in 2024 and just 3.4 in 2023.

GHG emissions reporting leads the way: 73% of companies now capture Scope 1 and 2 emissions internally (up from 68% in 2024), and 54% capture Scope 3 emissions (up from 51%). Cybersecurity metrics have seen the most dramatic growth, with 75% of companies capturing them internally—a reflection of both increasing cyber threats and the growing recognition that cybersecurity is a material ESG factor. Employee retention data collection surged from 39% to 56% year-over-year, and social value KPIs (SROI) jumped from 26% to 38%.

Quality control procedures have matured substantially since 2023. Manager-level quality checks on consolidated data are now performed by 68% of organizations—a threefold increase from 23% in 2023. Management or internal audit testing of data accuracy stands at 59%, up from 22% three years ago. Testing of ESG processes and controls has risen from 15% to 39% over the same period. These improvements indicate that companies are treating ESG data with increasing rigor, applying quality controls more typically associated with financial reporting.

Leaders demonstrate dramatically higher data maturity than Beginners. Among Leaders, 96% report moderate or major progress in defining KPIs (versus 63% of Beginners), 94% in collecting and reporting data internally (versus 42%), and 92% in external reporting (versus 38%). Leaders are also 4.2 times as likely as Beginners to use an integrated GRC (Governance, Risk, and Compliance) system for ESG data management—a technology choice that streamlines data collection, improves auditability, and reduces the manual effort that often introduces errors into ESG datasets.

However, inadequate access to data remains a growing concern: 46% of respondents cite it as a barrier in 2025, up sharply from 33% in 2024. This data access challenge is particularly acute for Scope 3 emissions, biodiversity metrics, and supply chain sustainability data, where information must be collected from hundreds or thousands of external entities with varying levels of data maturity and willingness to share. Organizations exploring how to make dense data reports more digestible may benefit from approaches like those in our Stanford AI Index analysis.

Digital Technology Driving ESG Assurance Maturity

The Digital Technology pillar (15% weight) captures the extent to which organizations leverage technology to support ESG data collection, reporting, and assurance. Leaders have adopted an average of 5.5 digital tools out of 15 surveyed, compared to 4.4 for Beginners. While this gap may appear modest, it translates into significant differences in data quality, reporting efficiency, and assurance readiness.

Cloud computing leads digital adoption at 83% usage among Leaders, up 25 percentage points from 2023. ESG-specific platforms have seen the most dramatic growth trajectory, rising from 20% adoption among Leaders in 2023 to 50% in 2025—a 30-percentage-point increase that reflects the maturation of the ESG software market. ESG data dashboards show similar growth, from 26% to 53% among Leaders. Data lakes and centralized data storage solutions grew from 16% to 38%, enabling the consolidation of disparate ESG data sources that previously existed in spreadsheets, emails, and disconnected systems.

Artificial intelligence is emerging as a critical enabler. Traditional AI (machine learning, natural language processing, automated data extraction) is now used by approximately 65% of Leaders versus 57% of Beginners. Generative AI, while still nascent at 16% adoption among Leaders, has grown from zero in 2023 and is being deployed for tasks ranging from gap analysis and narrative drafting to anomaly detection in ESG datasets. IoT sensor technology maintains high usage at 63% among Leaders, providing automated data collection for environmental metrics like energy consumption, water usage, and waste generation.

Despite these advances, the overall digital implementation picture shows signs of stalling. The proportion of companies reporting mid to complete implementation of digital systems for ESG data management actually declined from 62% in 2024 to 57% in 2025. This counterintuitive finding likely reflects the expanding scope of what “complete implementation” means as reporting requirements grow more complex. Companies that thought their systems were adequate are discovering new gaps as CSRD, ISSB, and other frameworks demand more granular and more frequently updated data than existing architectures can deliver.

Value Chain and Supplier ESG Requirements

The Value Chain pillar (10% weight) examines how companies extend ESG requirements to their suppliers and business partners. While this pillar carries the lowest weight, it represents one of the most challenging dimensions of ESG assurance—and one where even Leaders are showing signs of retreat. In 2025, 79% of Leaders impose robust, product-specific ESG requirements integrated into all procurement processes, down from 93% in 2024. This decline may reflect a more realistic assessment of what constitutes “robust” supplier requirements as companies gain experience with implementation.

Across the full sample, the supplier ESG landscape is dominated by two tiers: 40% of companies maintain basic requirements focused primarily on anti-bribery and corruption compliance, while 49% impose a broader set of ESG requirements that are actively monitored. Only 9% have achieved robust, product-specific ESG requirements embedded across all processes—down from 16% in 2024, suggesting that maintaining comprehensive supply chain ESG programs is proving more difficult in practice than in principle. Just 2% of companies report having no ESG requirements for suppliers at all.

CSRD Wave 1 reporters show incrementally stronger supply chain engagement, with 52% placing broad requirements on suppliers versus 48% of non-CSRD companies. The directive’s value chain reporting requirements—which mandate disclosure of upstream and downstream sustainability impacts—are pushing companies to develop more systematic approaches to supplier ESG data collection. However, inadequate supplier ESG performance remains the third most cited barrier to overall ESG maturity at 47%, up from 43% in 2024.

The Beginner segment shows the most encouraging trajectory in value chain engagement: 24% now stipulate robust supplier requirements, up from 14% in 2024. While still far below Leader levels, this growth rate suggests that supply chain ESG expectations are becoming table stakes across the maturity spectrum, driven by both regulatory requirements and commercial pressure from downstream customers demanding sustainability credentials from their supply bases.

Lessons for Companies Preparing for ESG Assurance

The KPMG ESG Assurance Maturity Index 2025 delivers a clear message: while awareness and assurance uptake are growing rapidly, the underlying maturity needed to sustain credible ESG reporting remains a work in progress for most organizations. The fact that 76% of businesses remain in early or mid stages of ESG maturity—two years into the index’s history—underscores that achieving assurance readiness is a multi-year journey requiring sustained investment across governance, skills, data, technology, and supply chain management.

For companies at the beginning of their ESG assurance maturity journey, the data points to several critical priorities. First, governance must lead: organizations where boards meet quarterly on ESG and take direct responsibility for determining ESG’s impact on business value consistently outperform their peers across all other pillars. Second, early investment in digital infrastructure—particularly ESG-specific platforms and integrated GRC systems—pays compounding dividends as reporting requirements expand. Third, skills development cannot be deferred: the 37% of Leaders who have completed building their ESG teams enjoy systematic advantages in data quality, reporting speed, and assurance outcomes.

The regulatory trajectory is unambiguous. CSRD in Europe, SEC climate disclosure rules in the United States, ISSB adoption in multiple jurisdictions, and proliferating national sustainability reporting mandates across Asia and Latin America all point toward a future where ESG assurance is as fundamental as financial auditing. Companies that treat this as a compliance exercise will find themselves perpetually behind; those that approach it as a strategic capability-building opportunity will join the Leaders tier and unlock value from their sustainability commitments.

The metrics captured and reported externally continue to expand year over year—from 3.4 in 2023 to 5.5 in 2025—and this trend will only accelerate as double materiality assessments require companies to disclose impacts they have previously kept internal. The organizations that succeed will be those that build systems, governance structures, and human capital capable of not just meeting today’s requirements but adapting fluidly to tomorrow’s. In a landscape where 99% of companies report stakeholder pressure from at least three groups beyond regulators, the question is no longer whether to pursue ESG assurance maturity but how quickly to get there.