© Maria Aluchna, Maria Krawczyńska-Kaczmarek. Article available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence
Growing ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) awareness leads to rising stakeholder expectations and regulatory pressure toward a sustainability transition. The process of sustainable development impacts different organizations and institutions, including banks which, due to their essential role as intermediaries in the financial system, channel funds into economic activity. Stakeholder expectations, regulatory pressure to report non-financial information and the need for a shift towards sustainable finance results in an increasing demand for ESG disclosure.
The aim of this article is to identify the growing importance of ESG data and the changing demands for such information at the company level for banks operating in Poland. We present an overview of the sustainable banking literature which argues that financial institutions progress from defensive compliance to proactive integration of ESG into risk management, pricing and product development. This evolution increases the demand for decision-useful, comparable and assured ESG data from corporate clients. Drawing upon the regulatory changes, we outline the concept of sustainable finance and discuss the banks’ role in increasing the transparency of companies. We confront theory with practice by presenting the results of a survey conducted in 2024 and 2025 based on a sample of banks operating in Poland regarding their demands for company ESG data and the sources these data derive from.
ESG data, banking sector, sustainable finance
M0, M1
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