Understanding response privacy and score privacy

This article is for Disclosers and explains how your response data will be shared according to your selected response privacy and how your score(s) data will be shared according to your requests.


Contents

• Response data privacy for all Disclosers
• Score privacy: Capital Markets Signatories requested Disclosers
• Score privacy: Disclosers requested by Supply Chain Members and/or other Requesters

Response data privacy for all Disclosers

All Disclosers have the option to choose whether their response is public or non-public when they submit their questionnaire response. Please see our article on submitting your response for further guidance, and while the below offers a summary, please refer to our Terms of Disclosure, sections 6, 7, and 8, to learn how CDP may use your response data.

If a company chooses to submit a public response, it may be published on the CDP website or otherwise be made available to all data users. The information in the response may also disseminated to CDP data users including investor research firms, raters, and other permitted recipients. Please refer to section 7 of our Terms of Disclosure for further information.

If a company chooses to submit a non-public response, CDP will make this data available to your direct Requesters, including any Supply Chain Members requesting your response, and Capital Markets signatories if you are requested by CDP, Capital Markets Signatories. CDP may also make your response available to other Permitted Recipients; for instance, for the purposes of scoring your response. We may also use your response data in aggregated or anonymised form to include in reports or other deliveries. Please refer to section 8 of our Terms of Disclosure for further information.


Score privacy: Capital Markets Signatories requested Disclosers

All Disclosers who are requested to disclose by Capital Markets Signatories are listed on CDP’s website. The response status, whether they disclosed or did not respond, may also be shared and listed on CDP’s website.

For Disclosers requested to disclose by Capital Market Signatories, all scores are made publicly available, regardless of whether the response itself is public or non-public. This includes Self-Selected Companies, who respond to 'CDP Capital Markets – Self-Selected Companies'. Scores can be found on CDP’s public corporate scores page.

However, if you are responding to CDP or on an environmental issue for the first time, CDP offers the option to keep this score private for the first year. Private scores are shared with your requesting customers. Please raise a case of category 'I have a query related to the questionnaire' and of subcategory 'I would like to make my response public/non-public' via My Support to discuss or request this option. You will need to be signed in to access this.  

If you are Capital Markets requested for Climate Change but are assigned another environmental issue via a customer request only then your score will be kept private. Please refer to the below section. If you are assigned that environmental issue due to your CDP-ACS activities or your assessment of issues, then your score will be made public in line with the rules in this section.

Please note that if you have been requested to participate and do not submit a response, you will be noted as ‘Declined to participate’ or ‘No response’ and may receive a public ‘F’ to indicate ‘failure to provide sufficient information’. You will only receive a public ‘F’ score for each environmental issue that you have a specific CDP Capital Markets request for. An F does not indicate a failure in environmental stewardship.

If your data is being included in another organization’s response, such as a parent company, you will be noted as ‘See Another’, indicating that stakeholders should refer to another organization’s response, and your score will reflect that of the other organization.


Score privacy: Disclosers requested by Supply Chain Members and/or other Requesters

If you are not requested by CDP Capital Markets Signatories, and are only requested by Supply Chain Members, Banks, RE100, or other Requesters, then your score(s) will be kept private; unless your company scores an A in which case you’re a score will be made public.

Private scores will be shared with your Requesters, please refer to our Terms of Disclosure for further information.


You may also find the following articles helpful:

• Understand your CDP disclosure request
• Questionnaire and scoring guidance for disclosing companies
• How to submit a questionnaire response