3.2  Consumers and end-users: our impact and strategy

Sustainability is in our DNA. With KPMG N.V.’s sustainability department founded in 1992 and our first assurance engagement on environmental information taking place in 1996, we have made sustainability part of our work for more than 30 years and are intrinsically motivated to contribute to a more sustainable society. Initially, KPMG N.V. focused on the environmental part of sustainability, raising awareness of the importance of environmental transparency and the increasing need for environmental accounting and assurance to support companies and their stakeholders in managing and controlling environmental risks. Over the decades, we have expanded our approach, combining our in-depth expertise in Assurance and Advisory with specific technical expertise on a broader range of sustainability topics, such as decarbonization, ESG strategies, and human rights.

Today, the increasingly urgent need to build a more equitable and environmentally sustainable society, as well as the impetus provided by new regulations, is accelerating the speed of the sustainability transition. Together with our global network, we are continuously improving and enhancing our services to maintain a frontrunner position in sustainability. For us, the implementation of sustainability regulations is only the beginning; we are also committed to – and internationally recognized for – supporting our clients in improving their sustainability performance beyond compliance.

At KPMG N.V., we contribute to society by providing verification that supports increased trust in financial and sustainability information and by embedding sustainability across our client services. From our stakeholder engagement, we have concluded that our positive impact on society through our ESG related Assurance and Advisory services is a material sustainability matter. We believe we have a positive impact on society and consider our sustainability services for society as a financial opportunity; however, if we fail to properly address the need for sustainability support across all our services, this matter becomes a financial risk.

S4 Consumers and end-users

Impact materiality

Financial materiality

Value chain

Positive

Negative

Opportunity

Risk

Impact on sustainability through our services

We consider the role of both the auditor and the advisor important in this era of transformation and are confident that our values support our professionals to fulfil this role. In particular, our values encourage our people to bring ESG proactively into engagement conversations with clients: leading change, values first. Meanwhile, for many clients, the new CSRD is reshaping sustainability reporting and performance from the 2024 reporting year onwards. Dealing with this change and navigating this new landscape – even with regulation still under development and subject to transposition into national law – requires courage and collaboration, both within our organization and with our clients. We see it as our responsibility to communicate with our clients on the need to act. Moreover, our expertise needs to be applied to clients at different levels of maturity regarding their sustainability practices, knowledge, and ambitions.

Listening to the needs of our stakeholders in 2021/2022, we issued a letter to inform our clients about the climate impact on our audit approach. We published another such letter in 2023/2024, a year in which we also began including a climate scope paragraph in the long-form audit report of clients’ financial statements 2022.

Our role is ultimately to increase public trust in information. We define our consumers and end-users as the users of corporate reporting and the consumers of our client organizations’ activities. KPMG N.V. aims to support clients that meet our ethical standards with sustainability services in two categories: those related to the sustainability reporting chain and those related to sustainability performance.

Services related to the sustainability reporting chain

Our Assurance and Advisory professionals alike provide services related to the sustainability reporting chain, increasing trust among end-users and consumers who use the information our clients share about their sustainability performance. The main ESG support we provide in this area includes:

  • Reporting frameworks and standards: providing knowledge to clients that supports them to identify and address regulatory requirements across actual and future ESG regulations (e.g., ESRS, the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), or specific topical regulations).

  • Data: supporting clients in creating and/or collecting data on the sustainability matters they face.

  • Technology: helping clients embed new digital solutions to guarantee data quality and increase data collection efficiency. This gives them the opportunity to provide their stakeholders with qualitative, timely ESG information and steer their organization based on reliable information.

  • Reporting: helping clients embed new ESG reporting laws and regulations in their organization, including regulatory requirement scans, reporting implementation support, accounting support, and organizational readiness support (relating to, e.g., cultural change, internal controls and governance, and financial transformation).

  • Risk and compliance: helping our clients develop governance and internal control frameworks on non-financial reporting.

  • Due diligence: supporting our clients with the impact of ESG performance on deals and increasing the reliability of and trust in ESG performance data.

  • Assurance: providing assurance on ESG reporting on specific sustainability regulations (e.g. CSRD, GRI, International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB)).

Consumers and end-users are therefore positively affected by the availability of correct and complete sustainability reporting, which supports them (and other stakeholders) to make informed decisions about the reporting entity.

Services related to improving sustainability performance

Our Advisory professionals provide services to support organizations in improving their sustainability performance. We work with many clients who are seeking to accelerate their progress toward their transitional ambition, but we also encounter clients who are considering their sustainability performance for the first time owing to new ESG-related laws and regulations, including many companies in scope of the CSRD from 2025 onwards. Having supported clients on their sustainability performance for many years, we know that as soon as an organization starts measuring its performance, its results become visible and hence more important. We see this happening for a fast-growing group of clients, to whom we provide a variety of strategic and operational advice including:

  • ESG strategy support: building new ESG strategies or improving existing ones to contribute positively to sustainability matters and to support organizations in developing profitable strategies regarding ESG and sustainable investments.

  • Climate risk assessments and decarbonization services: helping clients with their net-zero strategies or business model changes.

  • Biodiversity analysis and advice.

  • Circularity services.

  • Supply chain analysis: increasing clients’ insights into their supply chain and supporting them in taking action, in the face of increasing requirements around supply chain responsibility.

  • Data and technology support: helping clients improve their measurement capabilities and efficiency using ESG reporting and tooling solutions.

  • Culture and change management: helping clients embed sustainability-related changes in their organizations, including through leadership support.

  • Risk and regulatory compliance support: aligning reporting requirements across different regulatory frameworks that are, or will become, applicable to clients.

We are committed to driving meaningful, sustainable change for our clients, which in turn has a positive effect on consumers, end-users, and society as a whole.

Our strategy is founded on prioritizing ESG topics in our decision-making, processes, and solutions. In the previous and current year, we were and are focused on embedding our ESG ambitions into all we do – an approach we call “watermarking ESG.” We are continuously improving and applying our expertise in ESG together with our other strategic and reporting capabilities. Recognizing that the high speed of change in our operating environment will pose challenges to our people and services in the coming years, we will ensure we continue to make a positive contribution to society in this important era of transformation.

3.2.1  Policies and actions related to consumers and end-users

The key policies and actions that support our professionals to deliver strong ESG-related services to our clients include:

  • ESG assurance quality framework: Along with competence centers staffed with subject-matter experts from our Sustainability department, this framework provides teams with technical support, enabling them to better embed ESG knowledge in all our engagements. By delivering quality assurance on ESG, we ensure that consumers and end-users can access the accurate and verifiable information they rely on in making informed decisions about investments and other matters, especially when it comes to clients’ sustainability performance.

  • Partnerships: Collaboration is needed to bring the best services to our clients and actively forge partnerships to co-create stronger solutions. Our notable partners include:

    • Naturalis, the national biodiversity research institute and an international leader in digital biodiversity information. Our collaboration brings together Naturalis's biodiversity expertise and KPMG N.V.'s experience in advising on sustainability, strategy, and implementation to advise organizations on their impact on nature and biodiversity.

    • Technology providers, with whom we work to offer clients expertise, tooling, and solutions for more efficient and effective ways of working.

    • Nyenrode Business University, home to our joint ESG Innovation Institute. Since 2022, our executive program has provided a forum for more than 200 board members and KPMG N.V. partners to learn and share their ESG knowledge and experiences.

  • Education and learning: We are prioritizing the delivery of adequate and relevant ESG knowledge to all our professionals, so they can in turn provide our clients with high-quality insights and services. This includes knowledge on the most relevant ESG regulations (such as the CSRD and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD)), provided through technical education programs that are tailored to the specific needs and requirements of our workforce. These initiatives also encourage our people to start courageous conversations with clients about their future ESG needs.

  • Engagement procedures and policies: These clarify and guide engagement management, provide rules for ESG-related assurance and advisory procedures to maintain the highest quality standards, and include standard working papers and tooling to support our professionals during their work.

  • Client and engagement acceptance procedures: These are vital to our organization, serving to evaluate the risk of accepting prospective and existing clients and engagements across all functions of KPMG N.V. Implementing the CSRD has not yet affected the requirements we set when accepting clients and engagements.

3.2.2  Processes for engaging with consumers and end-users about impacts on sustainability

At KPMG N.V., we mainly engage with consumers and end-users via our clients, with direct communication taking place through audit opinions and the explanation of the audit process provided in the shareholders’ meeting. We also engage with consumers and end-users across a variety of user groups via different channels. We consider our main engagement initiatives to be:

  • Via our sustainability assurance we communicate with consumers and end-users and provide trust to sustainability reporting. Our sustainability related advice is reflected in our clients' strategies, policies, and actions that ultimately affect consumers and end-users.

  • User-group engagement (e.g., VEB, Eumedion).

  • Thought leadership made publicly available via our website or social media, in which we share our knowledge and expertise with a wide group of users.

  • Webinars on technical sustainability content, accessible free of charge to clients and other audiences, during which we share our knowledge and expertise and thereby support the sustainability actions of clients and non-clients.

  • Our ESG Expert podcast series, created in 2024, which targets a non-executive audience that is interested in gaining expert ESG knowledge and willing to turn this knowledge into action.

  • Regular meetings organized through a wide range of stakeholder channels (e.g., public debates, the NBA, the AFM, PCAOB, EFRAG) that represent the consumers and end-users of our services. Participating in these channels allows us to support decisions made and bring clear guidance and statements to consumers and end-users.

  • Our KPMG RAAD Board Program , which includes both in-person and online events for executives, management- and supervisory-board members, and the next generation of leaders. This is a forum for education and discussion on a variety of topics related to good governance, geopolitics, ESG, boardroom performance, artificial intelligence (AI) adoption, evolving legislative frameworks, and more.

  • Client care and satisfaction measurements, enabling us to address clients’ evolving expectations and continuously improve our performance.

3.2.3  Processes to remediate negative impacts and channels for consumers and end-users to raise concerns

We prioritize growing the capacity of our workforce to support clients by delivering ESG assurance and advice, ensuring that the quality of our services meets public trust requirements. We consider the existing channels as described in the Governance section Policies and actions in relating to complaints and whistleblowing scheme (new window) to be sufficient for raising concerns or complaints specifically related to sustainability.

3.2.4  Action and targets on material impacts on consumers and end-users, approaches to managing material risks and pursuing material opportunities related to consumers and end-users, and the effectiveness of those actions

While we are committed to measuring our positive impact on consumers and end-users via our work for our clients, we recognize that we are not yet able to do so. In 2024/2025, we intend to start defining specific actions to enable us to measure our impact. We are investigating how to set targets and metrics for this matter considering that it is not yet possible to label revenue as being ESG related, since this information is not yet completely embedded in our data. These metrics will support our actions and performance by helping us focus on actions with a material impact. We expect to confirm one or more metrics in our 2024/2025 integrated report and to start preparing for data readiness.