Corporate Sustainability Assessment
What is the CSA?
The S&P Global Corporate Sustainability Assessment (CSA) leads the field in helping companies make the link between sustainability and their business strategies.
The CSA is S&P Global Sustainable1’s in-depth evaluation of corporate sustainability performance. Established in 1999, It builds on decades of experience to help companies measure, manage, and communicate how they perform on the issues that matter most to their business and stakeholders.
In practice, many companies use the CSA as more than an assessment. They describe it as a health check, a benchmarking tool, and a catalyst for action. By actively engaging in the CSA process, companies often accelerate momentum to create value from sustainability: linking sustainability to strategy, aligning teams, uncovering gaps, and turning scattered initiatives into a coherent approach.
In a world of shocks, transitions, and uncertainty, this matters because resilience is increasingly a core business requirement. The CSA helps companies build resilience by encouraging connected decisions that carry across functions, business units, and organizational levels.
In 2025, more than 3,600 companies, representing half of global market capitalization chose to participate in the CSA process.
Our Approach
Industry-relevant, resilience-oriented
The CSA is designed around an industry-specific lens, focusing on sustainability topics that can influence long-term performance, especially those tied to risk management, adaptability, and resilience.
Structured, evidence-based, decision-useful
The CSA follows a consistent, structured framework that supports comparability across industry peers and tracking over time. It helps companies strengthen the foundations needed for resilience—such as clearer governance, better data discipline, stronger accountability, and more consistent management systems.
Built to connect
Resilience isn’t built in one team. It’s built when decisions connect across finance, risk, operations, procurement, HR, legal, and sustainability. CSA participation helps bring these perspectives together so that strategy and execution reinforce each other, and sustainability becomes a coordinated business capability rather than a collection of initiatives.
Insight that drives action
Companies participating in the CSA receive access to benchmarking tools that allow to use CSA outputs to:
- Identify gaps and prioritize improvements.
- Align goals, metrics, and ownership across teams.
- Strengthen programs, controls, and reporting readiness.
Translate sustainability performance into a clearer, credible narrative for stakeholders.
Why Participate
Benchmark where you stand – and where to focus next
Use a structured assessment to benchmark against industry peers and top performers, understand strengths and gaps, and prioritize resources where improvement will matter most.
Turn sustainability into a coherent strategy – not scattered initiatives
Companies that engage in the CSA often find the process itself is adding real business value, helping them link sustainability to strategy, align teams, uncover blind spots, and build a more coherent approach in their business reporting.
Strengthen credibility with stakeholders
Support clearer, decision-useful sustainability communication with a recognized, structured assessment. The CSA’s online questionnaire and benchmarking database serves as a repository of information, helping respond to growing expectations from investors, customers, boards, and employees.
Earn recognition and share progress
Participating companies receive Score badges to use in annual reports, social media, and on their websites. Eligible companies also receive special recognition in the S&P Global Sustainability Yearbook.
Join a global participation base
In 2025, more than 3,600 companies took part using the CSA as a recurring annual cycle to track progress, improve performance, and strengthen resilience over time. Another ~9,000 companies were assessed based on public information, making the CSA database a comprehensive tool to benchmark global sustainability performance.
Sandeep Chadna
Chief Sustainability Officer, Tech Mahindra
A History of Capital Market Relevance
From Paper-Based Beginnings to a Comprehensive Sustainability Database
The journey began in 1999 with a simple paper-based questionnaire. Over time, this process evolved into a sophisticated corporate sustainability database, now recognised as a benchmark for companies and capital market participants alike.
Growing Impact among Capital Market Stakeholders
The CSA database has drawn significant attention from stakeholders in the capital markets. Today, more than five hundred clients, based in nearly fifty countries, subscribe directly to ESG Scores and the underlying Raw Data generated by the CSA as essential outputs. These subscribers include financial institutions collectively managing assets valued at $58 trillion.
Applications of ESG Scores and Data
Clients use these scores and data to benchmark corporate performance, manage investment portfolios, allocate financial capital, and develop engagement strategies. The reach of ESG Scores and ESG Raw Data extends further as they are a key component in selecting companies for potential inclusion in over 200 sustainability and climate indices produced by S&P Dow Jones Indices, further extending their reach to clients and market segments. Notable examples include the Dow Jones Best in Class index family (formerly known as DJSI) and the Scored and Screened Indices, including the sustainability adjusted versions of the S&P 500; S&P 1200 and S&P Global LargeMidCap indices.