Benefit from an independent assessment of your company's sustainability performance

Which companies are eligible for DJSI?

Which companies commission the CSA as a service?

How does the assessment work ?

What is the assessment timeline?

Each year over 3,500 of the world's largest listed companies are invited to participate in the SAM Corporate Sustainability Assessment free of charge. The total sustainability score attained determines a company's inclusion in one of the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices. Invited companies fall into one or more of the following groups:

• 2,500 largest companies in the S&P Global BMI (by year-end free-float market capitalization) are invited to participate in the CSA on the basis of their eligibility for DJSI World: companies scoring in the top 10% of each SAM industry are selected

• 800 largest companies from 23 emerging markets are invited for DJSI Emerging Markets: companies scoring in the top 10% of each the SAM industry are selected

• 600 largest companies in the S&P Global BMI from each region are invited for the regional indices: companies scoring in the top 20% of each the SAM industry are selected for DJSI Europe/North America/Asia Pacific

• Additional country-specific indices track the performance of the top 30% of the country’s listed companies by sustainability performance

“We consider the CSA to be the premier external sustainability assessment. To keep our sustainability strategy relevant into the future, Linde can’t simply look into the mirror. We need a way to be able to look into the future. The SAM assessment is one of our key tools to do that” Riva Krut, VP and Chief Sustainability Offices at Linde Plc., USA, participating in the CSA since 2003

Large privately-owned businesses, companies preparing for a stock exchange listing,  or listed companies not invited for the CSA  can decide to commission the assessment in order to have their corporate sustainability performance evaluated.

The sole difference between the standard DJSI process and the commissioned assessments are the assessment deadlines.
The underlying methodology and assessment approach is exactly the same for all companies participating in the CSA, making the results comparable and enabling comparison with DJSI members and other invited companies. Contact our ESG Benchmarking team to learn more.

From data to score

SAM Corporate Sustainability Assessment uses a consistent, rule-based methodology to convert an average of 600 data points per company into a total sustainability score.

Your CSA portal - secure, online, easy-to-use

The CSA is completed via our secure and user-friendly online questionnaire platform.

The 61 industry-specific questionnaires each contain approximately 80-100 questions covering 20 different key themes. Our convenient online reporting tool substantially facilitates reporting, and after the first year of participation and can be prefilled with previous answers in subsequent years.

Our user-friendly online reporting tool (see the screenshot) allows you to:

• access a question-specific help function including background information on the rationale for each question/criterion as well as key definitions
• easily attach supporting evidence including hyperlinks, documents and comments to support and illustrate your answers
• quickly view questionnaire completion progress with clear color-coding scheme
• share access to the tool within your organization to enable different users to enter data
• control final questionnaire sign-off

See also: Assessment Checklist

The timeline below is for companies invited to participate in the CSA on the basis of their eligibility for a Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI). Companies that have not been invited as part of the DJSI cycle are not bound by this timeline. In either case, CSA results will not be shared with any company before the official announcement of the Annual DJSI Review in mid-September.