Koramco Achieves Top 'Five Star' Rating in World's Most Prestigious ESG Evaluation

Global ESG Rating Agency 'GRESB'... Achieves Highest Grade in First Year of Participation
Enhancing Energy Efficiency and Expanding Investor Communication... Recognized for ESG Management

[Asia Economy Reporter Kwangho Lee] Coramco Asset Trust was recognized for its ESG management achievements by receiving the highest rating, ‘5-Star (Five-Star),’ in the world’s most prestigious ESG assessment, ‘GRESB 2022,’ on the 4th.

GRESB (Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark) is the world’s most authoritative ESG assessment that comprehensively evaluates the environmental and social impacts, as well as stakeholder relations, of real estate physical assets and their managers. Based in the Netherlands, it has rapidly expanded its evaluation scope beyond Europe and North America to Asia and Oceania recently.

Last year, ESG evaluations were conducted on 1,520 real estate-related companies worldwide and a total of approximately 117,000 real estate assets. This year’s evaluation scale is reported to have increased by more than 10% compared to the previous year.

Unlike general ESG assessments that only evaluate the eco-friendliness of assets, GRESB quantifies and examines the ESG policies of managers, social contributions, and management transparency from multiple perspectives. It also subdivides evaluation targets by country and asset type, scoring them through relative evaluation to encourage healthy competition among participating organizations.

Above all, the evaluation criteria are upgraded annually, allowing participating organizations’ ESG levels to grow together. For this reason, global investors and the asset management industry recognize GRESB as the most credible ESG evaluation standard.

Coramco is the leading private real estate finance company in Korea, managing approximately KRW 28 trillion in assets through domestic and overseas physical real estate assets and equity investments related to real estate. Since last year, to keep pace with the global ESG trend, it has established an ESG committee directly under the board of directors and created an ESG strategy team, systematizing the previously scattered ESG capabilities within the organization. In particular, it is focusing on enhancing the effectiveness of ESG management by recruiting external climate change experts to improve the eco-friendliness and energy efficiency of asset management.

Coramco announced in March that it would participate in ‘GRESB 2022’ to determine whether its ESG management performance direction aligns with global standards. After six months of evaluation, it received the valuable result of the highest rating, ‘5-Star,’ on this day.

GRESB evaluation ratings are divided into five levels from ‘1-Star’ to ‘5-Star,’ and it is known that less than 20% of asset managers worldwide receive the ‘5-Star’ rating.

Coramco’s ability to receive the ‘5-Star’ rating in its first year of certification is thanks to its long-standing dedication to eco-friendly asset management capabilities. At a time when the concept of ESG did not exist in Korea, Coramco proactively introduced the outside director system ahead of related regulatory legislation and, in 2010, developed the ‘Green Smart Building Index’ in collaboration with KAIST Graduate School of Management, actively incorporating eco-friendly elements into asset management.

The main asset subject to this evaluation, ‘Majesta City Tower 2,’ is the first office building in Seoul certified with the ‘LEED CS Platinum’ (the highest eco-friendly rating, ‘Platinum’) by the U.S. Green Building Council. This building has introduced approximately 100 kW capacity solar power facilities, an automatic energy management system, and geothermal heat pumps, generating about 656 MWh of energy annually to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It is also recognized for realizing a circular economy by installing a reclaimed water system to save water resources and maximizing resource utilization through waste recycling.

Coramco plans to significantly expand the scope and range of evaluation targets based on this assessment. To this end, it is conducting a full survey of energy usage, renewable energy generation status, water resources, and waste recycling status of all physical real estate assets under management to build an energy database. This will be used as a strategic indicator for ESG evaluation by asset in the future.

Additionally, to enhance stakeholder trust, it is diversifying communication channels and systematizing supply chain management to promote mutual growth with partner companies, actively advancing ESG sophistication across overall management and managed assets. Through this, it aims to secure ESG initiatives in the domestic real estate finance industry.

Joonho Jung, CEO of Coramco Asset Trust, said, “The environment we enjoy now is something the current generation borrows from future generations,” adding, “It is time for us to urgently consider what we can do for the next generation.” He also stated, “GRESB 5-Star is not a destination but a milestone, and we will share what we have learned with the industry to collectively raise ESG standards across the sector.”