Case Studies / Liberty
Financial Services · Real Estate

Liberty: From Compliance to Confidence

Building a data-driven sustainability practice. How Liberty moved from chasing spreadsheets to assurance-ready Scope 1, 2 and 3 reporting across 43 properties on DASH Ascent.

GCX Conversations · Liberty
43
Properties
1.2M sqm
Portfolio Area
Scope 1, 2 & 3
Assurance-Ready
2030–2050
Net-Zero Commitments
Overview

A Pan-African financial services group, reporting under growing scrutiny

Liberty is a leading Pan-African financial services group and the insurance arm of the Standard Bank group — described internally as the group's “fourth pillar.” Its business spans the Liberty Property Portfolio alongside a broad insurance book covering short-term, life, and corporate benefits products.

Liberty operates under Prudential Authority oversight covering climate change, water, waste and energy management, and physical and transition risk, and is now working toward IFRS S1 and S2 compliance. GCX partnered with Liberty to move sustainability data management from a manual, compliance-driven exercise to a strategic, technology-enabled practice.

Liberty's environmental and climate reporting programme is aligned to the TCFD recommendations, tracking Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions, water and waste across owned buildings and leased space against net-zero commitments of 2030 to 2040 for Scope 1 and 2, and 2050 for Scope 3. With six Green Star-certified retail assets and reporting against selected KPIs, the reliability of the underlying data is imperative.

At a Glance
Client
Liberty
Group
Standard Bank Group
Locations
Across South Africa
Size
43 properties — 13 owned, 30 leased office space
Sector
Office, retail and specialised
Square Metres
Over 1,200,000 m²
Platform
GCX DASH Ascent
The Challenge

A compliance-first starting point, and the daily cost of it

Before working with GCX, Liberty's sustainability data collection was largely regulatory in nature — driven by which regulations applied rather than by strategy. That created a set of hands-on, day-to-day problems.

01
A manual, fragmented process
Multiple data owners across owned and leased buildings, often working from different templates and spreadsheets.
02
A significant time drain
Time spent chasing data owners and manually checking whether templates were complete and consistent.
03
Version control chaos
As one team member put it, there was no way of knowing which template was in use from one week to the next.
04
Error-prone consolidation
A manual consolidation process left the business exposed to human error, with heavy time and management overhead.
05
Internal silos
Data collection depended on close collaboration across teams that weren't naturally aligned.
06
The cost of getting it wrong
Liberty's own reporting shows the stakes: prior-year water, waste and energy figures required restatement where data collation and accuracy fell short.

Facing the same reporting burden?

Liberty moved from chasing spreadsheets to assurance-ready Scope 1, 2 and 3 reporting. Tell us where your data sits today and we'll show you what that path looks like.