Sustainability is a top priority for AG Insurance – and that includes the way it reports its sustainability performance. Through a close collaboration that combined LACO’s expertise with Microsoft technology, AG Insurance and LACO co-developed an automated, standardized, auditable, and repeatable sustainability reporting process.

The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) is the European guideline for sustainability reporting. The directive requires European companies to transparently and comprehensively map all relevant ESG (environmental, social and governance) themes using the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS). A key principle of the CSRD is dual materiality, i.e. companies must report on both their impact on the environment (inside-out) and the impact the environment has on the company (outside-in).

As the largest insurer in Belgium, AG Insurance is subject to the European Non-Financial Reporting Directive (NFRD) and had to publish its first CSRD-compliant report in 2025, covering 2024 data. The same applies to Ageas, AG Insurance’s majority shareholder, which is listed on the stock exchange.

To meet the CSRD requirements, AG Insurance first needed to ensure it could access all the right data. “We manage the data platform and act as a data office,” says Laurent Horion, Data Platform Manager at AG Insurance. “So we’re responsible for the data governance across all business lines. When teams need data for their sustainability reporting, they turn to us first.”

However, the major challenge with sustainability reporting is that the data you need often doesn’t originate from core systems. For example, at AG Insurance, there was little of this non-core system data available in an automated format, and data capture ended up becoming a manual process, with Excel as the primary tool.

This meant that implementing the CSRD presented AG Insurance with a much broader challenge. “First and foremost, we had to comply with the CSRD and deliver our first report in 2025, so we had to develop a method and approach for that,” says Laurent.

The second challenge was to also prepare a report for Ageas, with a view to consolidating reporting at the group level. “We don’t regard reporting simply as an obligation, but rather as part of our strategic mission. AG Insurance is among the top 1% most sustainable organizations worldwide. Sustainability is embedded in everything we do, so it goes without saying that our reporting must reflect that commitment.”

To achieve this, AG Insurance partnered with LACO, leveraging their expertise to co-design and implement a comprehensive end-to-end architecture that supported the entire process. This included everything from data collection and ingestion on an Azure data lake to analysis with Synapse Serverless and internal validation in Power BI, and the actual reporting with Tagetik. This framework was supplemented with Databricks – to process the various data layers – and Data Galaxy, a data governance tool that provides full insight into AG’s data catalog, data glossary, and data lineage.

For AG Insurance, LACO was the obvious choice, and the project built on a collaboration that has been well established over many years. As a local Belgian data, analytics and AI expert, supporting the full data value chain of their customers, LACO supported AG’s migration from their on-premise data platform to Azure Synapse. “LACO played a vital role in migrating our business self-service analytical programmes to the cloud,” says Laurent. “So we already had valuable experience with Azure, Synapse, and Power BI. This proved to be a major advantage, as it allowed us to quickly take the necessary steps within a framework already in place at AG.”

Even before LACO developed the design, Laurent’s team carefully examined what data would be needed for the report, which data owners would be involved, and so on. Then AG and LACO worked together to design the reporting process and had it evaluated by the stakeholders to ensure everything ran as smoothly as possible. “There was a lot of groundwork to cover before the actual development of the technical solution,” recalls Laurent. “When it came to double materiality, for example, we had to carefully consider which specific elements would be relevant to us as an insurance company.”

The biggest challenge turned out not to be around data or technology, however, but people. “Close collaboration between teams who had never worked together before was key to the project’s success,” says Laurent. “That’s how we arrived at a joint approach, across business lines, IT, and data. Short lines of communication between teams made a real difference.”

Specifically, the business teams use templates to enter the necessary data. By choosing templates, AG minimizes the risk of non-compliant data. Once all the data is available, things move quickly, and the actual report can be generated the same day. “Ultimately, the solution launch went smoothly, and from there we’ve been able to improve the process step by step since then. The environment is constantly evolving, so when requirements or definitions change, for example, we must react quickly.”

AG Insurance had a clear goal: to deliver a CSRD-compliant report on time. “We achieved that goal,” says Laurent. “Our solution meets business needs and regulatory requirements with its reporting.”

Would this have been possible without the solution? “If you dedicate enough people and time to it, anything is possible,” laughs Laurent. “But if we’d continued to do everything manually, we would inevitably have hit a wall. By implementing an optimally automated, standardized, auditable, and repeatable process, we not only save time, we can also be confident that we’ll be able to meet additional reporting requirements in the future – from both Ageas and the regulator. We have a solid foundation that will support our growth for years to come.”