Pre-defined Peer Group

Introduction

GRESB assigns each participant to a pre-defined peer group to contextualize their assessment results.

Peer groups do not directly influence the GRESB Score, Star Rating, or points achieved; however, they help put the GRESB Score into perspective relative to similar peers. Every reporting entity can see the characteristics of its pre-defined peer group within its Benchmark Report.

This page outlines how GRESB determines each entity’s pre-defined peer group.

Pre-Defined Peer Group Formation

GRESB determines an entity’s peer group using a simple, consistent set of quantitative rules. The table below illustrates the peer group creation process.

Each row in the table represents one ‘trial.’ The trial checks whether enough GRESB participants possess that row’s combination of characteristics.

GRESB will only create the entity’s peer group once GRESB will only create the entity’s peer group once six entities (the participant + five peers) match that combination.

GRESB carries out this trial-and-error process individually for every reporting entity, meaning each entity’s peer group is uniquely its own. For example, just because Entity A has Entity B in its pre-defined peer group, Entity B might not have Entity A in its peer group. The groups are not ‘closed circles’ of entities.

GRESB considers each entity’s primary location in forming its peer group. The peer group allocation methodology moves from most to least specific when testing combinations of characteristics.

For location, these are (in order of sequence/specificity): country, subregion, region, and super-region.

• The country, subregion, and region are defined using the UN country classification guidelines available here. The only super-regions used are Asia Pacific, grouped from Asia (code 142 in the UN classification) and Oceania (code 142 in the UN classification).

See the Asset & Portfolio Classification page in Completing GRESB Assessments to learn more about GRESB's classification thresholds.