4 interesting highlights from Mexican materiality matrices

This week, I want to share with you 4 interesting highlights after analyzing all the publicly available materiality matrices of publicly listed companies in Mexico.

1. We were able to find 57 materiality matrices in the market (out of 162 listed companies and REITs in both stock exchanges). This means a little over 35% of the market has done this exercise at least once by now.
2. The average number of topics the companies define as material after this analysis is 15. The smallest list of material topics contains 6 topics, the largest contains 30.
3. The Top 15 Material Topics by popularity in these matrices were:

It is no surprise to me the #1 most popular material topic is business ethics given Mexico is an emerging market and this is such a key factor in institutionalizing companies. For other more mature markets business ethics is most likely a generalized topic (or in other words, a topic companies are expected to be managing properly without truly making an extra effort). In Mexico it is still something many companies have to pay special attention to (especially in certain industries).

On the other hand, it is actually surprising to me (a positive surprise) that energy efficiency and GHG emissions are that popular. I say this because not many companies are publicly committed to global climate-related initiatives. Perhaps (hopefully) this shows in coming years this will change.

It is also good to see that popular topics cover all three ESG pillars. And while we would expect post pandemic to see an increase in social topics’ popularity, environmental topics are also gaining force (as the potential impacts of climate change are better understood), and corporate governance topics are unlikely to go anywhere in this market. So, in sum, what is likely to happen going forward with ESG strategies is that some topics (like health and safety) take the place of other currently popular topics, but that the three pillars remain well represented.

4. On average, materiality analyses in Mexico were done 3 years ago (2018). The oldest (which is still in use) is from 2012, and the newest are from 2020. We recommend under normal circumstances materiality analyses are updated every 2 or 3 years to keep up with stakeholders’ current concerns. Today, we think most analyses (except for those carried out last year) should be updated as the pandemic has materially changed many things. We would therefore expect to see a lot of activity on this front (new materiality analyses being done) in the next 1-2 years.

I hope you found this interesting. As usual, if there is anything we can help you with, please reach out.

Best,

Marimar

CEO, Miranda ESG