In order to achieve the goal of net zero transformation in 2050, the Financial Supervisory Commission (the FSC) released the "Sustainable Development Action Plans for TWSE and TPEx Listed Companies (2023)," which aims to help listed companies achieve their sustainable development goals.

The Taiwan Stock Exchange (the TWSE) has launched various ESG ecosystem initiatives since 2022. To provide companies with an understanding of the FSC’s action plan and to allow them to prepare for the adaption as early as possible, the TWSE will conduct a series of seminars starting from this April to enhance the resources available to listed companies to drive their sustainable transformation.

As a follow-up to the FSC's “Corporate governance 3.0 , ” the action plan focuses on ESG (environment, social, governance), with the four pillar of "governance," "transparency," "digital," and "innovation," as well as a framework consisting of five major dimensions, namely "Inducement for corporate net zero emission," "Development of corporate culture featuring sustainability governance," "Refinement of sustainability information disclosure," "Intensified communications with stakeholders," and "Pushing ESG evaluation and digitalization." 

In order to induce listed companies to attain net zero emission, the FSC publicized the “Sustainable Development Guidemap for TWSE- and TPEx-Listed Companies " in March 2022 and set up a task force to promote the roadmap and answer questions from listed companies in various promotional sessions. For "Development of corporate culture featuring sustainability governance," the TWSE has revised related regulations according to the action plan and included the revisions in corporate-governance evaluation for listed companies, such as the number of independent directors being no less than one third of the total seats on the board of directors, rationalization of compensations, limit of independent directors' terms to three, and increase of the share of female directors, plus plan(s) to formulate an exemplary organizational charter for sustainable development committee in 2023.

Concerning "Refinement of sustainability information disclosure," the TWSE plans to formulate a program to assist listed companies with paid-in capital of less than NT$2 billion in compilation of sustainability reports and spot-check such reports, plus improvement of measures governing assurance institutions, so as to enhance information disclosure quality. For "Intensification of communications with stakeholders," the TWSE will revise the Taiwan Stock Exchange Corporation Rules Governing Information Filing by Companies with TWSE Listed Securities and Offshore Fund Institutions with TWSE Listed Offshore Exchange-Traded Funds,” in line with advancement of uploading of shareholders' meeting manual and annual reports by listed companies. 

Finally, as for "Pushing ESG evaluation and digitalization," the TWSE is actively collecting external feedback for  ESG evaluation criteria formulation and plans to install a sustainability report digital production platform, helping listed companies automatically produce sustainability reports. With the development of international criteria as a reference, the TWSE is enriching ESG database content, encouraging enterprises to disclose plural sustainability information, and pushing multiple ESG products to induce capital influx. In addition, it plans to install an integrated ESG information platform, aggregating ESG-related data, market information, domestic and foreign laws/regulations, and promotional messages, for provision of one-stop information inquiry service, along with multiple visualized statistics and analysis. The platform is set to hit the road on July 3.

The promotional program for the action plan will be added to the ESG ecosystem already put in place by the TWSE last year, which now consists of an ESG information platform, ESG evaluation, multiple ESG products, assistance for corporate carbon inventory, education and training, sustainability transformation of peripheral units, and linkage to investor relationship.

Pooling the resources of the FSC, private bodies, and securities peripheral units, the TWSE has been assisting listed companies in making sustainability transformation, such as its upcoming campaign for pushing the action plan, so as to materialize its vision of forging a sounder ESG ecosystem and augmenting the international competitiveness of Taiwan's capital market.