Meeting our responsibility comes in many forms — in our work and in our daily lives, through the Values we share and the quality of work we provide. Now more than ever, I firmly believe that the business community has an opportunity and responsibility to help shape a more sustainable future. Which is why KPMG was among the first in our profession to catalog our environmental, social and governance (ESG) commitments in one place and report our progress transparently against the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) International Business Council (IBC) metrics in KPMG: Our Impact Plan.

Our Impact Plan sets out the commitments we are making on our journey to become a better business and reaffirms our commitments to the United Nations (UN) Global Compact Principles and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

I’m proud that with the release of KPMG: Our Impact Plan 2022, we get to show you the progress we’ve made so far, and how we’re working shoulder to shoulder with clients to support them on their own ESG journeys, across four important categories: Planet, People, Prosperity and Governance. Some highlights include:

• Planet: We’re implementing sustainable and equitable practices within our global organization by evaluating our supply chain and creating science-based transition plans so we can move to net zero in a fair and just way. As part of our commitment to be net zero by 2030, we set an Internal Carbon Price (ICP) that will help us measure and account for our carbon impact. From impact on biodiversity to the impact on social inequity, we’ve considered many dimensions of change and are confident we will make a significant difference.
• People: We created and introduced KPMG’s Inclusion, Diversity and Equity (IDE) Collective Action Plan throughout the global organization. We’re taking important steps toward gender diversity with females representing 48.4 percent of our people, and it’s our intention for women to fill more than one-third of leadership roles by 2025. We’re also developing guidance for our member firms around the world to help ensure their processes meet our human rights commitments.
• Prosperity: We announced last year a multi-billion-dollar investment to embed ESG into everything we do — enhancing our already robust tools and services to help accelerate our clients’ ESG journeys. Part of this investment will be used to build ESG hubs on multiple continents and create ESG accelerators to spur investment and innovation in emerging markets. We’re also training our more than 236,000 people to become agents of positive change and assisting clients on three pillars of opportunity: ESG transformation, ESG reporting and ESG assurance. And we continue to work alongside organizations to make significant contributions toward the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4) — including our work with UNESCO to help economically empower 10 million disadvantaged young people between now and 2030.
• Governance: Our work with the WEF, to set the IBC metrics for ESG reporting is one example of how we’re using our experience and knowledge to help shape the future of sustainable business. We’ve accepted roles at the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC), the Financial Stability Board’s (FSB) Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) and the Taskforce for Nature-related Disclosures (TNFD). We will work alongside the profession to support the work of the International Sustainability Standards Board, announced by the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) Foundation at COP26, as it develops and publishes ESG reporting standards and help our clients adapt as the nature of reporting evolves. This work is part of the wider role we believe we must play to support the development of consistent and credible information on sustainability matters.

It was a busy year, and there’s more progress to read throughout this 2022 update; and I am pleased that we achieved this while still working to deliver uncompromising quality to clients. Last year, we reported double digit revenue growth for the first time in many years — proof to us that purpose and prosperity are inextricably linked.

There is so much more to do, and we are determined to focus on where we can make the biggest difference in the world. Our Impact Plan is our roadmap, but it’s also an opportunity for you to learn more about us and how we hope to change for better and hold ourselves accountable to all of our stakeholders. Meaningful, lasting change doesn’t happen overnight, but we know we’ll be able to learn from our efforts and drive change throughout our global organization.

I thank you for taking the time to read Our Impact Plan and look forward to continuing our journey to be an even stronger, more sustainable business.