Reading a BRSR: an analyst's checklist

A BRSR for a large Indian company can run to fifty pages or more, with hundreds of numbers. Reading it from start to end is slow and rarely useful. A better approach is to know what you are looking for, go straight to those tables, and test the numbers against what you already know from the financial statements.

This checklist is built for analysts who want to form a view of a company's ESG profile in an hour or less. It starts with checks on reliability, moves to the material issues for the sector, and ends with cross-checks and red flags.

Twelve steps

1. Boundary. Section A: is the BRSR standalone or consolidated? Which subsidiaries are covered?
2. Assurance or assessment. Who checked the BRSR Core indicators, under which standard, and at what level? Which KPIs were covered?
3. Material issues. Read the company's list of material issues in Section A. Compare it with what matters for the sector (see the Sector Materiality Maps). Is anything important missing?
4. Workforce. Permanent versus other employees and workers, women's participation, and turnover rates. Large numbers of contract workers raise safety and labour questions.
5. Complaints. The stakeholder complaints table: how many filed, how many pending, and from whom.
6. Safety. Principle 3: lost time injury frequency rate and fatalities, for employees and workers separately. Any fatality deserves attention.
7. Energy and emissions. Principle 6: total energy, renewable share, Scope 1 and 2 emissions and intensity, for both years. Is Scope 3 reported?
8. Water. Withdrawal by source, consumption, discharge, and operations in water-stressed areas where disclosed.
9. Waste. Waste generated by type, and how much is recovered versus disposed of.
10. Ethics. Principle 1: fines, penalties, settlements and anti-corruption actions.
11. Openness of business. BRSR Core attribute 9: concentration of purchases and sales through related parties and dealers, and related-party loans and investments.
12. Leadership indicators. Which voluntary indicators does the company report, and with what depth?

Cross-checks against the financial statements

• Energy use against energy costs: a rise in energy cost with a fall in reported energy use needs an explanation
• Days of payables: compare BRSR Core attribute 8 with payables days calculated from the balance sheet
• Related parties: compare attribute 9 with the related party note
• Headcount: compare BRSR employee numbers with employee costs and any headcount figures in the management discussion
• Production: compare emissions intensity per unit of output with production volumes disclosed elsewhere