EBA moves to cut bank ESG reporting burden with 50% data reduction plan

The European Banking Authority (EBA) has announced plans to significantly simplify ESG and supervisory reporting requirements for EU banks, proposing a reduction of around 50% in required data points. The move is part of a broader EU effort to streamline financial regulations and reduce compliance burdens while maintaining effective oversight.

The proposal includes revisions to the EU’s harmonised reporting framework, aiming to eliminate redundant or overlapping data requirements and improve consistency across supervisory processes. By integrating various reporting exercises-such as stress tests and benchmarking-into a single streamlined system, the EBA seeks to enhance efficiency and reduce duplication.

A key focus of the reform is proportionality, with simplified requirements for smaller and less complex institutions. At the same time, the framework ensures that regulators continue to receive essential ESG and financial risk data needed for effective supervision, balancing regulatory oversight with operational feasibility for banks.

The EBA has opened a public consultation on the proposed changes, with implementation expected from 2027. The initiative aligns with calls from major EU economies to simplify financial regulations and reflects ongoing efforts to refine ESG reporting frameworks as sustainability disclosures become more integrated into the banking sector.

50 percent reduction in bank reporting data points combined with integrated reporting across stress tests and benchmarking addresses substantial compliance cost that European banks have long identified as burdensome. Proportionality provisions for smaller institutions further reduce the disproportionate compliance load on smaller-scale operators.

The tension between reducing burden and maintaining supervisory-oversight quality is real. ESG-and-financial data streams increasingly overlap; well-designed integration reduces duplication without losing analytical utility. Poorly-designed simplification could reduce data quality that supervisors need for meaningful risk-and-transition assessment.

For banks, financial-services regulators and their supervisory-reporting advisors, Cognitud's ESG strategy and transformation, sustainability due diligence and market intelligence teams help clients evaluate reporting-simplification opportunities, structure data-governance frameworks aligned with revised EBA expectations, and prepare disclosures aligned with EBA, CSRD, ISSB and jurisdictional bank-sustainability frameworks that increasingly determine competitive positioning across European banking sectors.