When the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) passed its long-awaited climate risk disclosure rule in March, Corpay's Chief Accounting Officer Alissa Vickery immediately took notice. Although the rule has since been stayed by a court, Vickery recently told CFO Dive that the SEC's vote has put upcoming environmental, social, and governance (ESG) regulations back on the list of issues the Atlanta-based payments company needs to address.

"That was an initial catalyst," Vickery said in an interview, also describing how, since March, the payments company has doubled down on planning a path toward collecting and reporting audit-grade environmental data in the future. "I'm somewhat grateful (for the SEC's decision), because it's really difficult to make decisions for something that doesn't truly exist yet."

Alissa Vickery headshot
Alissa Vickery
Courtesy of Corpay

Since March, Corpay has decided to expand its partnership with Workiva, adding a software module to help the company capture, collect, and match data for a range of upcoming disclosure requirements, including those from the SEC, California, and the EU's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), Vickery said.

The company will use the software to collect data, which will then need to be categorized according to different requirements. "We're brainstorming right now, and it's a bit like building an Excel workbook—you wouldn't just create one massive data document. If possible, you'd break the data into logically clear modules," she said. "It's a bit like building a data lake, then slicing or pivoting from it to provide disclosures."

This approach is a stark departure from the methods used in the company's two previously published corporate responsibility and sustainability reports, released in 2020 and 2021. The company, formerly known as Fleetcor, was renamed Corpay in March.

Previously, the company's ESG reports were more like investor relations or public relations documents. "We had a lot of text about how we think about ESG within the organization, but since I'm a payment service provider and don't have manufacturing plants on the other side of the world," Vickery said, the story was relatively simple.

As the company needs to shift toward complying with new regulations and providing audit-quality documents, the situation becomes more complex. Therefore, reporting responsibility now falls on Vickery and the team in the chief accounting officer's office, which reports to Corpay CFO Tom Panther, she said.

"No other department can actually collect, verify, and ultimately report something that is auditable," Vickery said. "If we can build the structure, framework, and implementation mechanisms that everyone can manage, that will produce better outcomes in both the short and long term."

Vickery describes herself as a "Type A accountant" who dislikes chaos. According to her LinkedIn profile, she has served as Chief Accounting Officer since September 2020, having previously spent eight years at Deloitte, one of the Big Four accounting firms, before joining the company then known as Fleetcor in 2011 as Vice President of Financial Reporting. She has since held various roles, including Senior Vice President of Accounting and Controls, and served as interim Global Chief Financial Officer for nine months through May 2023.

Currently, she sees the requirements of California's new climate disclosure laws as the most pressing. Although these laws face legal opposition from business groups, California passed laws late last year requiring companies operating in the state to disclose greenhouse gas emissions and climate-related financial risks.

This year, Vickery hopes to clarify which data the company needs to report and where, then begin capturing data on a monthly basis as a dry run for next year. She said determining exactly what the company needs to report is part of the challenge.

For example, of the more than 2,000 data points considered under the CSRD, perhaps only 15% are relevant to Corpay. Although it's not yet clear, she anticipates the company will need to look at employees' energy usage in facilities or travel.

"There are many standards, many different requirements, and currently none use exactly the same wording or exactly the same energy standards that we will ultimately report against," Vickery said, noting she wants to control data quality because she is the one signing off as Chief Accounting Officer. "So those of us responsible for governance, especially in large public companies or multinationals, are trying to figure out what to do next."