Palau and Sustainserv Join Forces to Reshape ESG Reporting with AI
Environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting has in recent years become both a necessity and a headache for companies worldwide. As regulators raise the bar with stricter disclosure requirements and investors demand greater transparency, sustainability teams often find themselves overwhelmed by the complexity of reporting standards, frameworks, and audit trails.
For Jerome Cloetens, co-founder and chief executive of Palau, this burden was the starting point for building something different. His Zurich-based company, launched in 2021, set out to make ESG reporting as structured and reliable as financial reporting—only faster, more collaborative, and aided by artificial intelligence.
Now, Palau has announced a strategic partnership with Boston- and Zurich-based consultancy Sustainserv, known for its two decades of work guiding companies through sustainability strategy and reporting. The collaboration pairs Sustainserv’s advisory expertise with Palau’s AI-powered technology, a combination that Cloetens says could change the way companies and consultants approach ESG disclosure.
In an interview with Movetheneedle.news, Cloetens explained what motivated the creation of Palau, how its platform works, and why this partnership matters for the future of ESG.
Tackling the Burden of ESG Reporting
For many organisations, sustainability reporting has become a sprawling administrative task. Multiple teams are asked to submit data, external advisors compile lengthy reports, and the end product often lacks consistency across frameworks. This patchwork approach frustrates both companies and auditors.
Cloetens recalls:
“Companies were spending time and money collecting data and writing reports, but the process was fragmented, inconsistent, and not audit-ready. We wanted to create a platform where sustainability reporting could be collaborative, transparent, and as reliable as financial reporting — powered by AI to remove repetitive work.”
This vision resonates at a time when regulations like the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) are set to reshape reporting practices for thousands of companies. CSRD requires large and listed companies in Europe to disclose in line with the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS), covering issues from carbon emissions to workforce diversity. At the same time, global frameworks such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), and CDP (formerly Carbon Disclosure Project) add further layers of disclosure.
What Makes Palau Different
Dozens of software tools claim to help companies manage ESG reporting, but Palau positions itself as more than just another reporting template.
“Most tools focus on data collection or offer templates for reports,” Cloetens said. “Palau goes a step further — we connect structured ESG data with AI agents that can autopopulate disclosures, flag gaps, run peer benchmarks, and even help with auditability. Another big difference is our open and partner-driven model: consultants and advisors can build their own workflows (like CSRD + GRI combined) directly on Palau and bring them to clients.”
This open model means Palau functions not only as a software provider but also as a kind of infrastructure. Instead of dictating one way of working, it allows advisors to embed their methodologies directly into the platform, tailoring processes to client needs. For consultants who must navigate between frameworks, this is a compelling proposition.
Building a User Base Across Borders
Palau’s client base reflects the breadth of today’s ESG landscape.
“We’re active in more than 7 countries, working with listed companies, mid-sized firms, and global consultancies,” Cloetens noted. “Our users are mostly ESG managers inside companies and sustainability consultants who run multiple client projects on Palau. Adoption has grown because we don’t position ourselves as ‘yet another reporting tool’ — we partner with consultants and give them a way to serve their clients faster, with better traceability.”
By engaging consultants rather than competing with them, Palau has positioned itself as an ally. This is an important distinction in a crowded software market where many advisory firms have resisted platforms that they fear could commoditise their expertise.
Why Partner with Sustainserv?
Sustainserv has been active since 2001, with offices in Boston and Zurich. It advises clients on sustainability strategies, materiality assessments, and reporting in line with international standards. In recent years, its work has increasingly centred on helping companies adapt to the CSRD, one of the most sweeping regulatory changes in corporate reporting in decades.
The partnership with Palau builds directly on this experience.
“With Sustainserv, the goal is to combine their deep advisory expertise with our scalable technology,” Cloetens explained. “They’ve already built a CSRD + GRI workflow on Palau, which shows exactly what we envision: a future where experts bring their methodology into the platform, and clients benefit from both the guidance and the automation. It aligns with our vision of making Palau a knowledge-sharing infrastructure for ESG reporting.”
For companies facing the dual challenge of aligning with CSRD while also addressing global frameworks, this approach could streamline compliance and reduce duplication of effort.
The Role of AI in Reporting
Artificial intelligence is at the heart of Palau’s promise. Its agents are designed to do the heavy lifting of drafting disclosures, checking completeness, and aligning with standards.
“Our AI agents can autopopulate disclosure drafts, highlight missing data points, and ensure alignment with frameworks,” Cloetens said. “In the Sustainserv collaboration, these agents are embedded in their workflow so clients can move from data to report drafts much faster. The key is that everything remains transparent and auditable — the AI helps, but the consultant stays in control.”
This emphasis on auditability is crucial. Regulators and investors alike are wary of “black box” AI tools that make it unclear how conclusions were reached. Palau insists its system provides full traceability, ensuring that consultants and companies can always see how a draft disclosure was generated.
Working Across Frameworks
Companies rarely report against a single standard. Multinationals may need to align with CSRD in Europe, GRI for global comparability, ISSB for investor-facing disclosures, and CDP for climate-specific requests. Each framework has overlapping but distinct requirements, leading to inefficiency and risk of inconsistency.
Palau aims to solve this:
“Palau maps requirements across frameworks so companies can work once and reuse disclosures across CSRD, GRI, ISSB, and others. This saves time and reduces duplication. For consultants, it means they can manage multi-framework clients in one place and keep consistency across all reports.”
This kind of interoperability is likely to become even more important as standards converge but remain imperfectly aligned.
A Future Closer to Financial Reporting
Cloetens is clear about where he sees ESG reporting heading.
“We believe ESG reporting will move closer to financial reporting — structured, standardised, and audited. AI will take over the repetitive work, but expertise and judgment will remain key. Palau’s role is to be the backbone: a place where structured ESG data, AI, and expert knowledge come together to make sustainability reporting not just a compliance exercise, but a driver of real progress.”
This perspective mirrors broader debates in the sustainability field. As disclosure becomes mandatory and assurance requirements expand, ESG reporting is no longer just a marketing exercise. It is part of the accountability that investors, regulators, and the public now expect from companies.
Conclusion: From Compliance to Progress
Palau’s partnership with Sustainserv underscores a shift in the ESG reporting landscape. Rather than treating sustainability disclosure as a costly compliance task, the two organisations aim to integrate expert knowledge with scalable technology. The promise is faster, more accurate, and more transparent reporting that benefits both companies and their stakeholders.
For Cloetens, the goal is not simply to ease reporting burdens but to enable sustainability teams and advisors to focus on what matters most: using data to drive meaningful change.
At a moment when companies face unprecedented scrutiny on their environmental and social performance, Palau’s bet is that combining AI with human expertise will become the standard way forward. If their collaboration with Sustainserv succeeds, ESG reporting may indeed begin to look a lot more like financial reporting — rigorous, auditable, and trusted.