Our approach to double materiality
19 Jun 2025
At Intertek, we recognise the importance of identifying, prioritising and validating the key environmental, social, and governance (‘ESG’) topics relevant to our business and our stakeholders.
In 2019, we conducted our first independent materiality assessment, with subsequent annual reviews conducted to confirm its validity. In 2024, we completed a preliminary Double Materiality Assessment (‘DMA’) – in preparation for upcoming regulations – which was reviewed and signed off by our Net Zero Steering Committee which includes our Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer.
Double materiality integrates both financial and impact materiality. This approach expands on the single materiality concept by requiring companies to assess not only how sustainability issues impact their financial performance but also how the company’s operations affect society and the environment.
For our own assessment, we used a third-party tool which helped us identify the ESG topics which we believe have the greatest impact materiality and/or financial materiality on our business and the greatest level of concern to stakeholders along our value chain.
The data sources used for the financial and impact materiality include publicly available corporate reports, sustainability reports, mandatory regulations and voluntary initiatives, as well as coverage in the news.
Assessing these key areas enables us to prioritise and focus upon the most material topics and effectively address these in our policies, programmes, targets and actions.
Our DMA will be assessed annually to provide a fuller picture of Intertek’s role and responsibilities in a broader societal context and will ensure that we continue to identify evolving areas of priority or concern for our stakeholders.
With a view to complying with future sustainability reporting directives, Intertek will take stakeholders’ opinions and expectations into account to feed our analysis of impacts, risks and opportunities (‘IROs’) through the lens of impact materiality and financial materiality, to determine the material issues on which the company will have to report.
