Bouwinvest Real Estate Investors takes a long-term focus and aims to generate stable, reliable returns for its investors. Bouwinvest is also placing increasing emphasis on meeting objectives on the environment, social value and good governance alongside its financial targets. A key challenge that Bouwinvest faces for the next years is how to strike a balance between achieving these stable financial returns while creating environmental and social value and good governance, given the geopolitical and economic uncertainties.

Bouwinvest has worked with its investors and other stakeholders to define a list of 11 key material themes, mainly ESG related, which form the backbone of the strategy in the years ahead. These themes go beyond the sustainability performance of real estate investments as they are driven by making the right policy choices, having qualified employees, transparent reporting processes, and having solid systems and data.

In 2021, Bouwinvest carried out a comprehensive survey with its investors and other key stakeholders. This resulted in 10 material themes. The initial longlist was established by consulting international standards, the SDG (the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals) industry matrix and peers both in the Netherlands and abroad, as well as analysing media reports and sector trends. This longlist was then consolidated into a shortlist by clustering topics and making them specific to Bouwinvest. The clustered list consists of 25 topics and was reviewed by those stakeholders involved.

In 2022, the materiality matrix was recalibrated after desk research, in which Bouwinvest looked at peers and trends in the sector. This resulted in the addition of one material theme (attracting and retaining talent) to make a current total of 11 material themes.

In 2023, the materiality matrix was recalibrated again taking a similar approach as last year and resulted in no changes. Towards the end of 2023 we started preparing for Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and as part of that we will perform a double materiality analysis taking an inside-out ánd an outside-in view on sustainability. This new materiality analysis will replace our current one and will form the basis for preparing ourselves for CSRD reporting in 2026 over the year 2025.