Evidence-Based Sustainability Readiness Index for Financial Institutions, with an IFI Shariah-Compliance Readiness Module

This 11-month project will develop and validate a Sustainability Readiness Index (SRI) that benchmarks how prepared financial institutions are to govern, manage, measure, and disclose sustainability risks and opportunities. The SRI will help regulators, industry bodies, and institutions identify capability gaps, set priorities, and track progress in sustainability governance and market practice. Using a transparent scoring framework, it will convert publicly available disclosures into comparable readiness scores, drawing on annual reports, ESG/sustainability reports, governance and risk disclosures, sustainable finance frameworks, product documents, and assurance statements. For Islamic financial institutions, a complementary Shariah-Compliance Readiness (SCR) module will assess observable maturity in Shariah governance, control environment and auditability, screening/exclusions alignment, purification/zakat and social finance transparency (where relevant), and reporting/assurance readiness. Methodologically, a standardized indicator codebook and evidence rubric will reward auditable, consistent disclosures and flag weak claims. Deliverables include the validated SRI framework and handbook, the SCR module, and a scored benchmarking dataset with audit trails.

Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU)