Materiality

ATB's Inaugural ESG Materiality Assessment

What is Materiality?

Our definition of materiality or a material topic is informed by the GRI—the most widely used sustainability reporting standard. Material topics are the economic, environmental and social topics that influence the decisions, actions and performance of an organization or its stakeholders.

This year, we conducted our first materiality assessment. We included our stakeholders and assessed the level of significance of different ESG topics to them. We followed the approach recommended by the GRI.

Assessing Materiality: Our Approach

We worked with a third-party consultation partner to identify relevant, material ESG topics. Selections were made through a review of information from stakeholder engagement, peers, ESG reporting standards and frameworks setters, and ESG rating agencies.

We then conducted a survey asking respondents to identify ESG topics that were most significant to them. More than 3,000 survey responses were received from across our stakeholder groups.

Topics spanned five broader categories and the top four topics from each category were plotted on a materiality matrix. The matrix shows the significance of each topic to our stakeholders and to our business. The closer a topic is to the upper right corner, the more material it is deemed.

ATB’s Material ESG Topics

Materiality Matrix

After reviewing the results, we consolidated related topics to create a list of 10:

  1. Data Privacy and Security

  2. Access to Banking | Accessible banking and financial inclusion

  3. World-Class Talent | Choice employer, talent development and recognition and reward

  4. Health, Safety and Well-Being

  5. ESG Governance | Risk management

  6. Ethics and Integrity | Anti-corruption and conflicts of interest

  7. Community Impact | Community investment, social enterprises, financial literacy and digital inclusion

  8. Sustainable Finance

  9. Resource Management | Resource efficiency, greenhouse gas emissions and clean technologies

  10. Climate Resilience

Each of these consolidated topics—and ATB’s approach to managing them—are described throughout this sustainability report.