There are CFOs in Mexico and Colombia who have reported under SASB standards for two years and still cannot access preferential green-debt rates. The problem is not the report. The problem is that they reported with sector averages, and credit analysts knew it before opening the first page of the document.
SASB standards are the set of industry-specific metrics that institutional investors and development banks use to compare a company's sustainability risk against its sector peers. They are not a corporate-responsibility questionnaire. They are the instrument with which an analyst at the IDB or CAF decides whether your company deserves a differential rate versus another in the same sector, of the same size and with the same business profile.
The questions we hear most when an industrial company in LATAM starts working with SASB are always the same: What exactly are they, and what sets them apart from GRI? Are they mandatory in Mexico or Colombia? How do they relate to the ISSB's IFRS S1 and S2? What is the consequence of reporting with sector estimates instead of primary data? Is it worth implementing them if my company is not publicly listed? This article answers all five, without detours.
SASB isn't a report. It's the language of your debt.
SASB standards are a set of 77 sector frameworks that identify the sustainability metrics most likely to have a financial impact in each industry.
That definition matters because “most likely to have a financial impact” is what distinguishes them from the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). GRI measures the company's impact on the world. SASB standards measure the world's impact on the company's value. They are opposite lenses on the same object, and that reversal of the gaze is exactly what institutional investors need to make capital decisions.
The GHG Protocol divides emissions into three scopes, and SASB standards translate that classification into comparable, auditable, sector-specific metrics. In August 2022, the IFRS Foundation took responsibility for maintaining and updating them within the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), making them the reference sector implementation guidance for IFRS S1 and S2.
What happens in practice when a manufacturing company in Monterrey tries to apply SASB standards is this: the Sustainability team downloads the sector guidance from the ISSB site, identifies that it must report carbon intensity per tonne produced, and then asks Operations for the data. Operations looks for it. They don't have it in that form.
What they have is the gas bill, the production spreadsheet, and an estimate someone built last year for the GRI report. The report gets produced, but with numbers no institutional credit analyst will take seriously. Without primary sector-level data, SASB does not work as a financial instrument. It only works as documentation.
Brazil adopted the ISSB standards, including SASB standards as sector implementation guidance, as mandatory for all its public companies: reports for fiscal year 2026 must be fully aligned and subject to external audit. For a Mexican, Colombian or Chilean industrial company with suppliers or buyers in Brazil, this means it already operates within the regulatory perimeter even if it is not listed there.
But the most direct impact is not regulatory. It is the price of capital. The ISSB's Investor Advisory Group uses data reported under SASB standards to assess the quality of sustainability information in credit and investment decisions. Companies that report with verifiable primary data access sustainable-debt instruments on different terms than those that report with sector averages. Without metrics that carry operational traceability, the development bank applies the generic spread: the most expensive one available for that company profile.
According to BloombergNEF, global sustainable finance surpassed 1 trillion dollars in 2023. LATAM represents less than 5% of that total, despite accounting for 10% of global emissions. The gap is not one of capital supply. It is one of data quality. The Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) confirms that in manufacturing industries Scope 3 represents on average more than 70% of the total carbon footprint. SASB standards are the vehicle through which that percentage becomes auditable information for the capital markets. Before SASB, that figure was an internal number. With it, it is an argument before a credit committee. Carbon is already a cost of debt.
According to BloombergNEF and the IFRS Foundation, the number of companies reporting under SASB metrics grew consistently between 2022 and 2025 in LATAM, while multilateral banks incorporated those metrics as a requirement in the covenants of sustainable-debt instruments. For the region's industrial companies, SASB standards stopped being a voluntary best practice and became the technical condition that separates access to preferential capital from the generic spread.
What the company that implements them with real data gains:
What you risk by implementing them without the right data infrastructure:
Most of the “cons” are not about the standard itself. They are about the gap between what SASB requires and what the company actually has in its operational systems. That gap is the problem to solve before hiring the consultant who writes the report.
The IFRS Foundation states that estimates based on sector averages are less precise than primary operational data, and credit analysts apply that criterion directly when assessing the risk of a sustainable-debt instrument. For an industrial company in LATAM, that difference has concrete consequences for the financing terms it can secure, and for how long it takes to access them.
The last row is not achieved with an Excel sheet or a consultant collecting data by email over three months. It requires an infrastructure that connects the company's operational sources directly to the metrics the ISSB defines for each sector. Bono operates exactly at that layer: it automates collection from meters, invoices and ERP systems all the way to generating the SASB indicators with full traceability from the source data to the published report. An 80-page PDF does not improve your access to capital. A data infrastructure with operational traceability does.
In 2026 the ISSB has an active public consultation to update 53 of the 77 SASB standards in key sectors such as agriculture, food, energy and manufacturing, with entry into force expected in the next 12 to 18 months. For companies in LATAM planning to implement them, this means the data architecture they build today needs to be flexible: the indicators evolve, and a system based on static files will have to be rebuilt from scratch with every update.
The most frequent barrier we find is not technical. It is internal friction. Companies that come to Bono intending to report under SASB almost always have the same problem: they know which metric they need, but they don't know in which system the data that feeds it lives. And the team that has the data doesn't know anyone is looking for it.
Step 1: Sector materiality mapping. The first step is not collecting data. It is knowing exactly which data the ISSB requires for the company's specific sector. For a processed-food company, the highest financial-weight metrics include energy intensity per tonne produced, GHG emissions in Scope 1 and Scope 2, water management and efficiency, and food supply-chain safety. For a packaging manufacturer, the profile is different: waste management, percentage of recycled materials and value-chain emissions gain weight. Bono maps the material metrics by sector before touching any internal system, so the team knows exactly what to look for and where.
Step 2: Connection to real operational sources. This is the step that sustainability consultancies rarely execute with enough rigor. The carbon-intensity data does not live in the Sustainability team. It lives in the gas meter in Production, in the electricity bill that Finance pays, and in the raw-material purchasing report that Procurement manages. Bono automates collection from those sources, eliminating the intermediary spreadsheet that today turns real data into non-auditable estimates. SASB isn't a report. It's the language of your debt. And that language only works if the data feeding it has real traceability from the operational source to the published indicator.
Step 3: Report generation with full traceability. A food company in Colombia with three production plants cut its SASB report preparation time from 16 weeks to four after implementing Bono's data infrastructure. The change was not one of speed. It was one of quality: the report went from estimates to verifiable primary data, and with that improvement it unlocked eligibility for a sustainable-debt instrument with the IDB that had stalled for two years for lack of auditable data.
Chile's Financial Market Commission published General Rule No. 461, becoming the first regulator in the world to make SASB standards disclosure mandatory at a national level. Chilean companies under CMF supervision are already within that obligation. The Framework Law on Climate Change (Law 21.455) adds further pressure: companies with a significant carbon footprint must report with verifiable data, and the carbon tax in force of 5 USD per tonne of CO2 makes that measurement have direct consequences on the income statement, not just on the annual sustainability report.
In Mexico, the pressure arrives through the commercial channel before the regulatory one. The European Union's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) applies tariffs adjusted for carbon intensity to products exported from Mexico starting in 2026. A steel, aluminum or cement manufacturer in Mexico whose emissions are not measured with a methodology compatible with SASB standards will pay the generic tariff, which is the highest available. And a SASB report based on sector estimates does not pass CBAM verification: the mechanism requires traceable operational data, not industry averages.
Colombia faces direct pressure from the international value chain. Law 2169 of 2021 establishes the framework for energy transition and green growth, and European buyers of Colombian agribusiness and manufacturing companies are incorporating CSRD reporting requirements that pass straight down to their suppliers in LATAM. Without verifiable SASB metrics, those contracts are renegotiated at a discount or lost. A sustainability report based on estimates does not survive a European supply-chain audit.
In Mexico there is not yet a rule that makes them directly mandatory, but the EU CBAM and the demands of European buyers make them necessary for exporting companies from 2026. In Colombia, Law 2169 creates the reference framework and CSRD requires them indirectly from suppliers of large international buyers. In Chile they are mandatory for companies under CMF supervision under NCG 461.
GRI measures your company's impact on society and the environment, answering to a broad group of stakeholders. SASB standards measure the impact of environmental and social risks on your company's financial value, answering specifically to investors. Institutional investors prefer SASB because it answers the question that matters to them for capital decisions: what undisclosed financial risk this company carries compared with its peers in the same sector.
Yes, if you access or want to access green debt, sustainability-linked loans from development banks such as the IDB, CAF or NAFIN, or contracts with international buyers that pass CSRD requirements down to their suppliers. SASB standards are not only for public companies. Bono works with mid-sized unlisted companies that implement them to improve their financing terms with regional development banks and to sustain contracts with European buyers.
The report gets produced, but it does not work as a financial instrument. Institutional credit analysts identify sector estimates versus primary data with operational traceability: data quality is part of the assessment protocol. A low CDP Score is a financial risk, not an environmental one. With SASB the same logic applies: the market does not punish emissions, it punishes opacity.
Every quarter without verifiable SASB metrics is a debt spread that does not improve, European contracts renegotiated at a discount, and CBAM tariffs with no carbon-intensity differential. All three have a price. And that price grows as the market advances.