About Rabobank and Nossa Data
Who is Rabobank: Rabobank is a cooperative bank with deep roots in the Netherlands and a global focus on the food and agriculture sector. Building on its agricultural cooperative origins, Rabobank combines strong customer relationships with deep sector expertise and international networks across the food and agriculture value chain. Sustainability lies at the heart of Rabobank and is embedded throughout the organisation where we balance risk, return and sustainability impact in our business decisions.
Who is Nossa Data: Nossa Data is an ESG reporting platform with an advisory team behind it. We help companies collect their sustainability data once and map it to frameworks like CDP, EcoVadis, MSCI, Sustainalytics, ISSB, ESRS and more. Our advisers then help close the gaps that hold their ratings back.
Challenge: a growing list of ESG requests for the Investor Relations & Rating Agencies team
Each year, Rabobank's Investor Relations & Rating Agencies team manages assessments from CDP, EcoVadis, MSCI, Sustainalytics, ISS and others. Although these frameworks draw on much of the same underlying ESG information, each has its own methodology, terminology, portal and deadlines. This means the team must navigate multiple processes and repeatedly translate Rabobank's sustainability information into the specific requirements of each assessment.
Key challenges included:
- Fragmented ESG information. Answers and supporting evidence were spread across teams, reports, previous questionnaires and emails, making it time-consuming to find and reuse information from earlier assessment cycles.
- Overlapping questionnaires. Rating agencies and frameworks often ask for the same information in different ways, leading to unnecessary duplication of effort in each reporting cycle.
- Rating agencies searching for the full picture. Rabobank had strong policies and programmes, but rating agencies can only score what they can find, and locating all the relevant disclosures is a challenge.
- Limited peer benchmarking. Without a clear comparison of how peer banks disclosed similar information, it was difficult to identify the most important disclosure gaps and prioritise improvements.
Solution: one platform for ESG data, advisory support across every rating
Rabobank brought the ESG data, supporting evidence and previous answers used for rating agency requests together in Nossa Data. This gave the Investor Relations & Rating Agencies team a central reference point and made it easier to reuse validated information across different assessments.
Nossa Data enabled Rabobank to:
Centralise ESG data across rating agency methodologies
- Work from in-app templates for CDP, EcoVadis and other rating agency assessments, so validated information could be reused across multiple requests
- Use AI-generated suggestions based on Rabobank's existing public disclosures and stored evidence
- Support data verification, quality checks and submission preparation for CDP and EcoVadis
Benchmark against peers
- Compare its disclosure with 5 peers, both overall and against specific rating agencies' methodology requirements
Close rating gaps
- Run gap analyses across the major ratings and rankings to understand key action items to change in public disclosure
- Send data gap submissions and analyst communications to rating agencies
- See their past EcoVadis scoring inside the template, with an EcoVadis-trained consultant on hand for questions
Plan with an advisor every month
Monthly advisory calls to turn insights into action. Nossa Data and the Rabobank team review progress, address questions and agree on which disclosure gaps and improvement opportunities to tackle first.
"Nossa Data gives our Investor Relations & Rating Agencies team one central place for ESG information and supporting evidence towards ESG rating agencies. For us, this means less duplication, more consistent and efficient responses to rating agencies, and better collaboration with colleagues across our bank on ESG topics." - Harmen Haan, Sr ESG Advisor, Rabobank
Outcome: less admin, stronger ratings
Over the last 3 years, Rabobank raised its EcoVadis score to a silver medal and improved its MSCI ESG rating 2 levels.
What changed along the way:
- All ESG data in a single home. They could easily see methodologies and data in the same place for all the rating agencies.
- Less re-typing, more gap-closing. Time the team used to spend copying answers between portals went into fixing the gaps that move scores.
- Raters could see the work. Gap submissions and analyst communications put Rabobank's existing policies and data in front of the agencies.
- Fixes landed before the next cycle. In-year reviews meant gaps showed up early, with time to act on them.
- Peers as a benchmark. With peer disclosure side by side, Rabobank knew which gaps mattered most.
Looking for support with your ESG reporting?
See how our platform and advisers help banks and global companies collect ESG data and lift their ratings. Request a demo.
