Not long ago, ESG (environmental, social, governance) risks would have been missing on most chief risk officers’ (CROs) radar screens.

It’s true that CROs in certain industries have been managing environmental risks for many years due the nature of their companies’ products or processes. However, the concept of ESG, including DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion), as a conjoined corporate imperative is relatively new.

As ESG gained support and momentum, CROs and others saw the one risk that seemed to be evident: not implementing some ESG protocol.

The passing of time has revealed a whole new set of risks that CROs need to help their companies realize and manage.

More and more companies are disclosing their specific goals relative to ESG just as they do their growth and earnings estimates. One of the big differences behind these two sorts of goals is that companies have a lot of historical and trend data to draw on when setting financial goals but do not have an equal amount of data when setting ESG goals.