Indicators are commonly used to provide evidence of progress on sustainability objectives and for reporting purposes in the finance sector. Measurement enables assessment of the degree to which financial institutions are adopting practices that impact sustainability, for example the Sustainable Development Goals or alignment with the Paris Climate Agreement.

There is currently no systematic methodology for assessing progress on greening within the financial system. The Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) has suggested that companies should develop scenario analysis to assess the resilience of their business model to a number of possible climate scenarios, while the EU is developing a taxonomy to standardize definitions of green. The main tool for measurement so far has been through the implementation of environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria.

ESG data is gathered through (mostly voluntary) disclosure initiatives, either directly from companies or by using publicly available information. ESG data spans a wide range of issues, including measures of corporate carbon emissions, labor and human rights policies, and corporate governance structure. Some financial institutions use this data in a granular way to inform their capital allocation procedures, for example by assessing the long-term financial impact of a particular ESG policy or by allocating a risk metric to a high-emitting company, whereas others rely on a broad ESG score which combines multiple factors to give an overall assessment of ESG management.