Buried in question 1.8 of a document most Thai sustainability teams have never opened is the single sentence that decides how much of your ESG work actually counts.
The document is the FTSE Russell ESG Scores and Indices FAQ — “Information for researched companies”, v1.5, December 2025, the one LSEG links to from its own Ground Rules. Question 1.8 asks: “Do you only use English information?” The answer is more revealing than a simple yes.
FTSE Russell says it recognises the importance of local languages and has made provision in the research process for them. Then it names them. Six languages. Thai is not one of them — and from 2026 the FTSE Russell ESG model is what scores every eligible SET-listed company, feeding the FTSE4Good Thailand Index that launched on 6 July 2026.
Although English is the commonly used business language, FTSE Russell recognizes the importance of local languages. Therefore provision has been made in the research process for other languages. The key languages covered are as follows: English, French, Spanish, German, Japanese and Chinese.
FTSE Russell — ESG Scores and Indices FAQ, v1.5, §1.8, December 2025Six languages — and Thai is not among them
Read that carefully, because the honest reading matters more than the dramatic one. FTSE Russell does not say Thai is never read. It says which languages its global research process is provisioned for — the languages a team of analysts assessing over 8,500 companies worldwide is resourced to work in. Thai is absent from that list.
So the question for a Thai sustainability team is not “will an analyst read Thai?” It is: are you willing to bet your ESG Score on it? Relying on your Thai edition to carry a theme is a wager, not a plan. And it is a wager placed against a scoring model that is unusually unforgiving of silence.
What that actually means for a Thai One Report
Here is the mechanism that turns a language gap into a score gap. FTSE Russell sends no questionnaire. Its Ground Rules (ESG Data Model Methodology v1.2, June 2026) state that data is gathered from publicly available sources at the entity level — corporate reports, websites and press releases. SET’s own transition guidance, published with LSEG, puts it plainly for Thai issuers: only public disclosures will be considered, and companies no longer complete questionnaires.
That sounds like less work. It is actually a transfer of risk. Under a questionnaire regime, a gap in your published report could be repaired in the answers you submitted. Under FTSE Russell’s model, an indicator with no data found against it simply scores nothing — and Theme Scores are calculated from the percentage of available indicator points a company earns. Silence is not neutral. Silence is zero.
Now layer on the FTSE4Good Thailand Index Ground Rules (v1.0, June 2026). Inclusion requires an ESG Score of 2.9 or above — the emerging-market threshold, not the 3.3 figure quoted for developed markets. More sharply: a Theme Score of zero in any applicable High Exposure Theme blocks inclusion outright. High Exposure themes carry a weight of 3 against 1 for Low Exposure, so the themes most material to your business are exactly the ones where a translation gap is most expensive. See how the raters differ on this →
| Old world: questionnaire raters | FTSE Russell from 2026 | |
|---|---|---|
| How data arrives | You submit it | Analysts find it in public sources |
| Questionnaire | Yes | No |
| Languages provisioned | Local language accepted | EN, FR, ES, DE, JA, ZH |
| Indicator with nothing found | Chased and clarified | Scores nothing |
| Zero on a High Exposure theme | Points lost | Blocks FTSE4Good inclusion |
30 September, then a four-week window that does not move
The calendar is where this becomes urgent rather than interesting. FTSE Russell’s research cycle runs from June to the following March. For the December index review — the live one — the rule in the FAQ is unambiguous: only company disclosures published by 30 September can be considered. Anything published after that date generally waits for the next assessment.
From today, that is nine weeks.
What follows is tighter still. Companies whose annual disclosures appear between April and September can expect an invitation to review their new assessment by the first weekend of October. The review window is two to four weeks — SET’s guidance describes a four-week period for Thai issuers — and FTSE Russell states in the same FAQ that it is unable to accommodate extensions. FTSE Russell’s own quality process then runs its data analysis for December-review companies in October and November.
Read the review window for what it is. It is not an opportunity to disclose. FTSE Russell is explicit that everything it is looking for is based on materials already in the public domain — you may point an analyst at what you have already published, and nothing else. If the substance exists only in your Thai One Report and never reached the English edition, October is far too late to fix it. The fix has a 30 September deadline. Track the full 2026 disclosure calendar →
Where the points leak in an English edition that already exists
Most SET-listed companies do publish an English 56-1 One Report. So the real exposure is rarely a missing document — it is a document that exists and still fails to earn points. In our review work on bilingual One Reports, the same four leaks recur:
The Thai report runs full length; the English “summary” quietly drops governance, human-rights and supply-chain detail — the sections carrying High Exposure themes.
The same Thai term rendered three ways across one report. An analyst searching for a recognised concept finds none of the three.
GHG figures published without boundary, base year, methodology or TGO verification status — data present, indicator unearned.
The policy, the target and the assurance statement live on a Thai-only page. Publicly disclosed, unreadably so.
None of these are translation errors in the ordinary sense. Every one of them is a scoring error. This is why we treat the English edition as a score-earning asset rather than a downstream deliverable: ISO 17100 Translate–Edit–Proofread, a locked bilingual ESG glossary, and every English section clause-mapped back to the Thai One Report so the two editions cannot drift. More on how disclosure language becomes disclosure risk →
A nine-week plan for the December 2026 review
Nine weeks is enough — if the work starts from the score model rather than from the document. What that looks like in practice:
- Map your English edition against FTSE’s 14 themes and find which are High Exposure for your ICB subsector — that is where a zero is fatal, not merely costly.
- Run a theme-by-theme gap audit between the Thai filing and the English edition. Anything material that exists only in Thai is, for scoring purposes, at risk of not existing.
- Publish the remediated English disclosure before 30 September — not the week after, when the assessment is already written.
- Get your carbon numbers TGO-certified and published with boundary, base year and methodology, in English, so quantitative indicators score.
- Confirm your registered IR or sustainability contacts with FTSE Russell now, so the October review invitation reaches a person who can act on it.
- Use the review window for its real purpose: pointing analysts at published English evidence they missed — and note you get clarification on up to 10 indicators.
See what your English edition is scoring — before 30 September
From 2026 FTSE Russell scores SET-listed companies from public disclosure only, with no questionnaire, in a research process provisioned for six languages that do not include Thai. Run the free Gap Audit and see, theme by theme, where you are leaving points on the table.
Run the free Gap AuditThailand spent a decade building sustainability disclosure in Thai, and built it well. The 2026 shift does not devalue that work — it changes the language in which the work is read. A theme that is thorough in Thai and thin in English does not score as partially disclosed. It scores as absent. The English edition is what earns the score, and this cycle it has a deadline. See how we build it →
Sources: LSEG / FTSE Russell, “FTSE Russell ESG Scores and Indices FAQ — Information for researched companies”, v1.5, December 2025 (§1.6, §1.8, §1.9, §1.16); FTSE Russell ESG Data Model Methodology Ground Rules v1.2, June 2026; FTSE4Good Thailand Index Ground Rules v1.0, June 2026; SET × LSEG, “Guideline to FTSE Russell ESG Scores” corporate guidance, v2, 30 July 2024.
See where your English edition is losing FTSE points.
A free Gap Audit maps your published English disclosure against FTSE Russell’s 14 themes — and shows exactly which gaps are quietly costing you points, index inclusion and investor attention.
