In 2025, S&P Global will invite over 12,000 companies to participate in the Corporate Sustainability Assessment (CSA).

The Sustainability Portal provides useful tools to efficiently manage the process of completing the questionnaire:

• Access a question-specific help function including background information on the rationale for each question/criterion as well as key definitions
• Prefill questionnaire responses using the most recent data S&P Global has on your company
• Easily attach supporting evidence, including hyperlinks, documents, and comments to support and illustrate your answers
• Quickly view questionnaire completion progress with a clear color-coding scheme
• Share access to the platform with internal (and external) team members to allow them to work directly on the questions to enable different users to enter data
• Choose your participation timelines to suit your company’s reporting schedule.

Leverage your Sustainability Software to Respond to the CSA

At S&P Global, we know how important seamless integration is for sustainability reporting. That's why we made the CSA questionnaire available in XML format (CSA Taxonomy), which is a widely used markup language for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. The CSA Taxonomy (including related question guidance) is available for all 62 industry-specific CSA questionnaires. This powerful tool enables incorporation of the CSA questionnaire into corporate reporting systems. By using the CSA Taxonomy, you can easily transfer the necessary data from your information management platform to the S&P Global Sustainability Portal via API.

S&P Global accredited sustainability management software providers that integrated the CSA taxonomy: Cierpa and Novisto. 

If you are a software provider interested in partnering with the CSA, please contact CSA@spglobal.com.

Each year, S&P Global invites all companies that will receive a public ESG Score to participate in the assessment process. The S&P Global Invited Universe is generally comprised of:

• Companies that are eligible for the Dow Jones Best in Class Indices. The underlying rules can be found here.
• Companies that form part of S&P Dow Jones Indices benchmark indices. The underlying rules can be found here.

S&P Global regularly evaluates its universe of assessed companies so that it stays relevant to the needs of the investment community, for example using the S&P Global Broad Market Index and market capitalization as a reference. S&P Global may add other, currently non-invited companies to the broader Research Universe. Moreover, non-invited issuers (i.e., individual companies) have the option to solicit a Corporate Sustainability Assessment (CSA) and obtain an S&P Global ESG Score.

Invited Universe: A rules-based list of companies for which S&P Global Sustainable1 will perform a Corporate Sustainability Assessment (CSA) on, and for which it will produce ESG Scores. These companies will be actively contacted (“invited”) to contribute to the assessment process. The Invited universe always refers to a specific methodology year.

Research Universe: All companies for which S&P Global Sustainable1 is going to perform a Corporate Sustainability Assessment (CSA) on and produce ESG scores for, irrespective of their invitation status. This can include companies that are not part of the Invited Universe. The Research Universe always refers to a specific methodology year.

Companies that are invited but decide not to participate may be assessed by S&P Global based on publicly available information, and the resulting Scores and data may be shared via S&P Global platforms. Participation in the CSA is not a prerequisite for eligibility in the Dow Jones Best in Class Indices or other S&P Global Indices.

Official invitations will be sent out between February and June. Companies may also check their invitation status using our search tool above and visit the Sustainability Portal to book their participation window at any time.

The 2025 CSA questionnaire opens for all companies on April 1st. Companies can select a participation window that best meets individual reporting schedules, see CSA timeline. Log in to the Sustainability Portal to reserve a spot.

All companies, including the ones which are currently not covered by our CSA Invited Universe, can access the CSA as a Service and get a Public, Confidential or Provisional (based on hypothetical data) CSA Score. In other words, all companies, including individual issuers, asset managers, as well as private equity or private debt funds, can commission a CSA score on themselves, their subsidiaries, portfolio companies or suppliers. CSA as a Service applies the same rigorous methodology as we do for companies in our invited universe. 

Contact our Sustainability Specialists to learn more.