IA-WORKIVA
25.5.2021 09:02:09 CEST | Business Wire | Press release
Workiva Inc. (NYSE:WK) today released findings from a survey of individual investors that reveal approximately 70% of respondents believe organizations have a responsibility to demonstrate ESG performance to investors, with Gen Z and younger Millennial-aged investors (18-34 year-olds) the most demanding around ESG credentials. The survey revealed transparency around ESG disclosures is becoming integral to investor decisions, and companies will undoubtedly experience increased pressure from investors to be able to report on their progress.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210525005313/en/
“Our survey findings represent a powerful motivation for organizations to take a serious look at how they are reporting ESG and other non-financial data,” said Julie Iskow, chief operating officer of Workiva. “We believe there is a real competitive advantage in attracting today’s modern investors with a commitment to corporate transparency.”
Top Survey Trends:
Younger Investors Know What They Want . Awareness around ESG is especially high within the younger generation, with 84% being aware of ESG, and of this group nearly two-thirds (64%) claiming to know a lot about it.
- ESG awareness was found to be most prevalent in Germany with 93% of investors under 34 years old noting they were already aware of ESG in investments.
- In the United States 65% of Gen Z and Millennials state ESG in companies has become more important over the last year and will continue to become more important (69%) due to climate change.
- Also, most pronounced in the U.S., 72% of 18–34 year-olds want to know whether a company lives up to their social and moral beliefs before they invest.
Difficulty in Trusting Data. When asked if they found it difficult to trust what companies are disclosing about what they’re doing for the environment and society, only 15% of respondents disagreed.
- In addition, over 60% of respondents across all regions stated they find it difficult to judge whether companies are doing the right thing when it comes to the environment and society.
Data is the Key. Over one-third of survey respondents (43%) in all markets noted they trust ESG performance more when reported through numbers and data than qualitative descriptions — this increased to 54% for 18-34 year-olds.
- 72% of individual investors believe that companies should make it easier for them to judge ESG efforts through data.
- More than half of all individual investors surveyed expressed that they would be more likely to invest in a company that demonstrates its ESG performance. This sentiment increased to 60% for Gen Z and Millennial-aged investors across all regions.
This survey of individual investors comes on the heels of large institutional investors and asset managers extolling the benefits of integrating ESG metrics as a key factor in building their investment portfolios, as well as trends in new regulations requiring non-financial reporting.
“The survey indicates that investors want to see earnings growth, deeper data transparency and progress in all areas of ESG. This will require a technology solution that can deliver accuracy and simplify the complex process of collecting and reporting non-financial data; Workiva is revolutionizing how companies approach ESG reporting with a solution that does just that,” added Iskow.
Workiva's cloud-based platform creates a connected and controlled ecosystem that streamlines the integration of financial and non-financial information. ESG and finance teams can collect, assemble and report data on one secure platform, allowing businesses to keep pace with the rapidly growing demand for trusted, transparent data and proof of ESG forward-looking business goals.
Check out the ESG Survey results or learn more about Workiva’s purpose-built ESG reporting solution .
About the Survey
Workiva commissioned a survey to better understand the current sentiment of individual investors (who have grown in importance and activity1 ) on the transparency and faith in ESG performance and reporting data. The survey findings cover individual investors from the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and France. Read our Fact Sheet for methodology and specific question responses.
1. Individual investors made up an estimated 19.5% of U.S. equity trading volume according to Bloomberg Intelligence, a jump of over 4% compared to 2019.
About Workiva
Workiva Inc. (NYSE: WK) simplifies complex work for thousands of organizations worldwide. Customers trust Workiva’s open, intelligent and intuitive platform to connect data, documents and teams. The results: improved efficiency, greater transparency and less risk. Learn more at workiva.com.
Request a Workiva demo: www.workiva.com/request-demo
Read the Workiva blog: www.workiva.com/blog
Follow Workiva on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/workiva
Like Workiva on Facebook: www.facebook.com/workiva/
Follow Workiva on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Workiva
Follow Workiva on Instagram: www.instagram.com/workivalife
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210525005313/en/
Link:
Social Media:
About Business Wire
Subscribe to releases from Business Wire
Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Latest releases from Business Wire
Octane AI Launches Phoenix, an AI Quiz Builder That Builds, Checks and Improves Quizzes for Shopify Brands21.10.2026 19:15:00 CEST | Press release
Phoenix builds a full quiz from a prompt or a document, catches broken logic before shoppers do and shows what every answer earns in Shopify revenue. Octane AI, the quiz and zero-party data platform for Shopify brands, launched Phoenix in October, its biggest release to date. Merchants describe the quiz they want or upload what they already have, and Phoenix builds it, checks it, personalizes the results and keeps improving it with experiments. One beta customer turned a single document into a complete product-launch quiz: “I attached it to Phoenix, and it built the whole thing, all the pages. It understood everything, not just the text but the logic behind it.” Across all live Octane AI quizzes, 15% of shoppers who finish a quiz place an order. Yet building one has meant hours of writing rules by hand, custom code for design and clicking through every path to find broken results. Phoenix handles those hard parts, from building a quiz to improving it after launch. “Since day one, we've
Cognite Earns Corporate Supplier of the Year Award from Marathon Petroleum Corporation21.10.2026 19:06:00 CEST | Press release
Cognite today announced it has been named Corporate Supplier of the Year winner in Marathon Petroleum Corporation’s 11th Annual Supplier Recognition Awards. The Supplier Recognition Awards is a program sponsored by Marathon Petroleum Corporation to honor suppliers that positively impacted the company’s business throughout the previous calendar year. “There’s a reason ‘Impact’ is one of Cognite’s most important core values,” said Girish Rishi, CEO of Cognite. “For us, the ultimate measure of our performance is delivering quantifiable value for our customers. From that perspective, the Corporate Supplier of the Year award from Marathon is particularly meaningful. Marathon Petroleum is an innovator, and to receive this recognition is a great honor to the Cognite community.” The Supplier of the Year Award from Marathon is the latest honor Cognite has received in 2026: In May, Cognite ranked 15th on CNBC’s Disruptor50 list, honoring venture-backed companies innovating across industries, exp
The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. to Webcast Capital Markets Experience: China Ecosystem Immersion Presentations on November 4, 202621.10.2026 18:48:00 CEST | Press release
The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. (NYSE: EL) today announced that it will webcast presentations from its Capital Markets Experience: China Ecosystem Immersion in Shanghai, China, on Wednesday, November 4, 2026. The event will feature presentations from Stéphane de La Faverie, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Akhil Shrivastava, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, as well as members of the Company’s Executive Leadership Team and local leaders. The presentations will highlight the Company’s strategy and capabilities in China, Beauty Reimagined in action, and how China serves as a blueprint for deploying the Company’s global capabilities to drive sustainable growth and stronger profitability. Due to limited capacity, in-person attendance is by invitation only. Interested parties can access the live webcast on Wednesday, November 4th, beginning at 1:00 p.m. China Standard Time (12:00 a.m. ET) at Investors – The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. A replay of the webcast wi
Future Health and Bridge for Billions to Launch Programme Strengthening Health Entrepreneurship in Emerging Markets21.10.2026 17:50:00 CEST | Press release
New programme will support locally rooted health entrepreneurs to build stronger ventures and deepen their impact in the communities they serve The programme responds to persistent gaps in capital and specialist support for promising health innovation across emerging markets First phase will target around 50 entrepreneurs leading late-incubation to early-acceleration ventures in Africa and Asia Entrepreneurs will receive tailored support, with selected groups later having the opportunity to access Abu Dhabi’s health innovations ecosystem Future Health – A Global Initiative by Abu Dhabi and Bridge for Billions will launch a new entrepreneurship programme designed to strengthen promising health ventures in emerging markets and help locally-developed solutions reach more people. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20261021719421/en/ The first phase of the programme will target around 50 entrepreneurs leading late-incub
Hephaestus Exits Stealth Having Raised $17.2M to Supply Rare-Earth-Free HTS Superconductors and Build Low-Cost Fusion Power21.10.2026 16:48:00 CEST | Press release
CiRi Ventures leads latest funding round as novel HTS magnets head to manufacturing in 2027, ahead of a negative triangularity reactor targeting net energy gain by 2030 Hephaestus today emerged from stealth with solutions that address two of the largest cost drivers in fusion power: the high temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets that confine the plasma, and the edge-localized modes (ELMs – major plasma instabilities) that drive up the cost and complexity of conventional reactor designs. The company also announced the close of a new funding round led by CiRi Ventures. Hephaestus was founded in London in 2019 with a single mission – to help make fusion energy cheap enough to compete on the grid. Its AI plasma solver initially swept the full space of tokamak design parameters, unconstrained by the legacy designs and materials much of the industry is already committed to, and identified negative triangularity (NT), which inverts the D-shaped plasma used in most tokamaks, as the most li
In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.
Visit our pressroom