Governance and Sustainability

Risk Mitigation and Engagement Strategies for Evolving Global Markets

Helping companies understand and communicate their corporate governance and sustainability value proposition. We embed structure, develop strategies, provide directional guidance, and create disclosures for your internal and external audiences.

Corporate Responsibility Advisory

Through corporate sustainability and ESG consulting, we support strategy development, materiality assessments, ESG reporting and communications, and multi-stakeholder engagement to successfully navigate evolving ESG standards, global regulations, and stakeholder expectations.

Corporate Governance Intelligence Council

Year-round strategic governance consulting, benchmarking and research with a 360-degree perspective aligned to the changing expectations of a wide stakeholder audience.

Board Evaluation

Independent, comprehensive 360-degree board evaluations. Fully customized approach will provide actionable and measurable insights to meet your board's objectives.

Corporate Responsibility Advisory

Navigating the changing landscape of ESG disclosure, regulation, and expectations is a complex and multi-faceted task. Our global team of experts provides targeted guidance and strategic advice, enabling our clients to meet compliance needs and advance their ESG and sustainability initiatives while establishing stronger connections to the organization’s overall strategy.

Our Services

Year round ESG consulting
ESG risk assessments and gap analysis
Global regulatory landscape readiness assessment and guidance
Peer, sector and industry benchmarking
Internal ESG structure
Materiality and double materiality assessment
ESG education and awareness training
Board presentations and education
ESG communication strategy

Investor and stakeholder engagement strategies
Full suite of design and content copywriting and creation services
ESG education for investor relations
TCFD and climate risk management
Ratings agency response
CSRD readiness
ESG for investor relations
ESG perception studies
ESG assurance readiness

The Global Regulatory Landscape of Sustainability Information is Evolving Rapidly

Navigating the complex and ever-changing global ESG landscape is more difficult than ever for organizational leaders. An approach that integrates organizational reputation, valuation, and credibility is essential for determining future sustainability strategy and mitigating business risk.

Stacks of sustainability reports representing a rapidly evolving ESG landscape.

Multi-Stakeholder Approach

Best-in-class sustainability programs require a multi-stakeholder approach. Incorporating the unique set of stakeholder perspectives—including investors, employees, suppliers, customers and communities—requires a thoughtful, strategic approach.

Rivel’s Governance and Sustainability services assist clients in mapping and analyzing the myriad environmental, social, and governance issues that are most critical for your business, compliance, and for your diverse stakeholders. Our team takes a data-driven approach to issue identification. Whether through a peer and stakeholder diagnostic, a formal materiality assessment or a double materiality assessment (CSRD compliant), our global experts provide a comprehensive analysis of the multifaceted and significant issues impacting your organization to drive actionable reporting and engagement tactics.

Rivel governance and sustainability consultant providing an ESG analysis.

Our Approach Identifies What Matters to Your Company

Across global financial markets, ESG disclosure has become a basic expectation for issuers and a fiduciary responsibility for asset managers. At its core, ESG is a valuable risk management tool that companies can use to their benefit—or risk falling short if they fail to disclose sustainability information.

The Rivel team takes a targeted and practical approach to investor priorities and engagement. We offer targeted learning and internal communications tools to ensure senior leaders are well-versed in top-of-mind governance and stewardship priorities. Your organization’s story is unique. We offer tailored investor engagement tools to ensure you tell a story that sticks.

Rivel governance and sustainability team discusses ESG strategies.

A Global Team with a Wealth of Experience

Rivel’s Governance and Sustainability experts have a wide range of educational and professional experiences ranging from asset management, law, corporate communications, leading ESG strategy and reporting in-house, ratings agencies, consulting, public policy, research, and project management.

Our team is well versed in emerging regulations including SEC rules and related frameworks, IFRS/SASB standards and ISSB, TCFD, TNFD, UN SDGS, GRI, and CDP, as well as European regulations, including the EU Taxonomy, SFDR, and CSRD/ESRS.

The wealth of knowledge our team possesses enables us to help our clients as they navigate the increasingly complex world of reporting frameworks, ratings agencies, investor policies and expectations, and requests from stakeholders to help mitigate risk exposure and gain better control of their organization’s strategic sustainability narrative. Our team of experts examines best practices to determine practical strategies tailored to your organization’s budget, industry, size and culture.

Design & Copy Services

In-house Design and Copywriting Expertise to Fit Your Organization’s Needs

Our team of expert writers and award-winning designers work with consultants to develop impactful, relevant, and on-brand sustainability reports. We create a range of disclosures for clients, including ESG summary documents and tear sheets, full sustainability and ESG reports, executive summaries and infographics, and sustainability website designs.

Our writers have broad experience in corporate communications, journalism, advertising, content strategy and publishing, helping provide a new perspective for your reporting needs.

Rivel's award-winning team of designers and copywriters are trained and experienced in producing best-in-class communications through the Workiva platform.

Process Goals

The Ecosystem

Our Process

Strengthen and improve internal processes
Ensure alignment with peers and stakeholder demands
Create focused communications that align with existing strategic, governance and investor messaging
Gain a deeper understanding of investor and key stakeholder needs and perceptions
Achieve measurable results

Outcomes

Drive internal alignment and efficiency

Develop long-term ESG strategy

Meet evolving regulatory needs

Strengthen stakeholder engagement

Create focused and impactful disclosures

Define and control company narrative

Conduct materiality assessment

Corporate Governance Intelligence Council

Rivel’s Corporate Governance Intelligence Council (CGIC) is the only program of its kind to combine a 360-degree perspective from all your constituents – the global buy-side, proxy voters, senior management, investor relations, legal counsel, and the corporate secretary. Members receive custom benchmarking and gain access to the most powerful and comprehensive governance library and database in the industry. This is coupled with year-round consulting for all governance, engagement and disclosure initiatives.

Consulting

Year-round governance consulting
Strategic governance engagement and disclosures
Shareholder resolution response

Research

Custom benchmarking
Investment and corporate communities
Voting analysis, projections and risk assessment

Community

Governance and Sustainability Rapid Action surveys
Vast library of research and data
Conferences and virtual events

Board/Management Insight

Annual presentations to board and management team
Assistance with board materials
Drive governance and engagement best practices

Benefits of CGIC Membership

Year-round governance consulting

Rivel’s team of governance experts are available at any time to counsel you on governance issues that may surface and to give guidance for internal and external functions and communications.

Strategic governance engagement

Rivel’s corporate governance team will provide guidance in preparing comprehensive investor engagement strategy and shareholder messaging for routine or resolution response situations. This includes identification and analysis of audience, creating custom discussion points and SEC-filed presentations, investor dossiers, and engagement preparedness.

Disclosures

Evaluation of proxy disclosure and related investor messaging. Guidance on language, clarity, consistency, structure, alignment with all investor messaging, and identification of areas for enhanced disclosure. Additional opportunity to produce fully designed enhanced proxy statements.

Custom benchmarking

Company-specific, custom benchmark studies. These could include topics such as board composition, diversity and compensation, engagement activities and disclosures, strategic engagement roadmap with investor messaging and target identification, compensation and governance structure. Each project is custom designed.

Voting analysis

Registry analysis to provide insights on voting policies, impact of proxy advisors, historical vote analysis for all top holders.

Provide a voting policy assessment.
Determine influence of proxy advisors.
Highlight who to call for governance engagement.
Historical vote analysis.
Vote analysis of peer companies and on specific issues.
Governance voting policy risk assessment.

Vast library of research and data

Full access to our entire library of research (over 650 governance resources). Research is conducted amongst the corporate groups (corporate secretary, general counsel and investor relations officer) and institutional investors/proxy voters. The library also includes institutional investor proxy voting policies and procedures.

Conferences, Rapid Action surveys and virtual events

We connect you with your peers through our vendor-free conferences, Rapid Action surveys, and Virtual Exchange meetings. Understand how other companies are addressing similar challenges through a confidential process in 48-72 hours, leading to personal networking and engagement opportunities with your peers.

Board and Management Presentations

Assistance with board materials and presenting to internal audiences on the latest developments and trends impacting governance and sustainability.

Board Evaluation

Independent, comprehensive 360-degree board evaluations that focus on self- and peer-assessments, board leadership, committee reviews and alignment with management. Our fully customized approach will provide the right solution to meet your board’s objectives and provide actionable insights to help execute on measurable goals.

With the increased demands of the modern board of directors, many companies are taking another look at the board evaluation and education process. Many boards understand that self-administered surveys may not be the most effective approach every year, and are adopting independently-administered, comprehensive evaluations designed to elicit meaningful feedback from every board member.

Best practice demands that board evaluations should not just be about the basic elements of meeting processes and board functionality. A truly effective and independent evaluation critically examines the most important responsibilities of a board – its impact on valuation, risk management, strategic oversight, corporate culture and long-term stewardship.

Evaluation Features

Independent and objective

Multi-stage process (online & live)

Telephone or in-person interviews

In-person or non-recordable presentation

Fully customizable

Efficient and effective

Focus on strategy, culture, board alignment and risk

“

“As ESG has grown in importance for the institutional investment community and our customers, we decided the time was right for Quanta to allocate resources for a more formalized approach to communicating our ESG initiatives. Given varying frameworks, the litany of ESG rating agencies and the challenge of organizing a number of internal stakeholders to launch this process, we knew we needed outside expertise to help us organize and prioritize our efforts. Dave and his team certainly have that expertise and were very effective with helping us get a game plan together to get our ESG program organized and started the right way.”

Kip Rupp, CFA, Vice President, Investor Relations, Quanta Services, Inc.

"Rivel has been an invaluable partner and guide in Essential’s ESG journey. As the evolution of the ESG landscape has taken many twists and turns, Rivel has provided a steady and confident hand on the wheel helping to guide our company. From developing award-winning reports to launching a robust microsite to leading insightful investor perception studies, it is hard to imagine what our experience would have been like with any firm but Rivel. Even years later, we remain struck by the level of wisdom, support and creative ideas brought to this partnership. As an ESG Manager in a one-person department, time spent collaborating and brainstorming with experts equally passionate about ESG and my company is one of the highlights of my work. We are proud to now be among the industry’s leaders in ESG, according to our investors and various industry watchers. Through our work with such a top-tier innovator like Rivel, we are excited about where the future leads for our ESG efforts."

John Catalano, ESG Manager, Essential Utilities

"Rivel’s partnership in conducting an ESG materiality assessment helped us understand the sustainability concerns of our various stakeholders, both at a high level and as actionable and detailed stakeholder-specific feedback. We used the results to inform our ESG strategy, which has been well-received by our board and company leadership. Rivel executed the assessment employing best practices using both quantitative and qualitative data, produced the assessment very efficiently and very thoughtfully constructed the results. The conclusions are already playing a role in implementation and refinements for our ESG initiatives going."

Sarah Plaster, Ph. D., Senior Director, Environmental, Social and Governance Strategy and Execution, SAIC.

"When Walker & Dunlop first began to explore the ESG landscape, we felt extremely daunted given the wide range of company disclosures and the number of frameworks and rating systems that exist. Rivel helped us navigate all of this, starting by gaining a deep understanding of our company’s operations and goals and then taking us step by step through the process of creating the foundation for a comprehensive ESG program that we can build upon for many years to come."

Kelsey Duffey, Vice President, Investor Relations, Walker & Dunlop

Risk Mitigation and Engagement Strategies for Evolving Global Markets

Helping companies understand and communicate their corporate governance and sustainability value proposition. We embed structure, develop strategies, provide directional guidance, and create disclosures for your internal and external audiences.

Corporate Responsibility Advisory

Corporate Governance Intelligence Council

Board Evaluation

Corporate Responsibility Advisory

Our Services

The Global Regulatory Landscape of Sustainability Information is Evolving Rapidly

Multi-Stakeholder Approach

Our Approach Identifies What Matters to Your Company

A Global Team with a Wealth of Experience

Design & Copy Services

Process Goals

The Ecosystem

Our Process

Outcomes

Corporate Governance Intelligence Council

Consulting

Research

Community

Board/Management Insight

Benefits of CGIC Membership

Year-round governance consulting

Strategic governance engagement

Disclosures

Custom benchmarking

Voting analysis

Vast library of research and data

Conferences, Rapid Action surveys and virtual events

Board and Management Presentations

Board Evaluation

Evaluation Features

Amplify Your ESG Program Today

Are you prepared for CSRD?