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Ethisphere’s new Inside the Ethics Premium® report drives home once again that strong ethics is good business. And it does it by illustrating how ethical companies performed well over the last five years and how they translate program maturity into business language.
The report found that the publicly listed companies in the 2026 World’s Most Ethical Companies® cohort outperformed a broad global benchmark by 8.2 percentage points from January 1, 2021 through December 31, 2025. This year, the report expands on that data, noting how these companies showed greater resilience during periods of market downturns.
Inside the Ethics Premium also gives practitioners a more useful story than outperformance alone. Across the deepest stress periods of the last five years, the 2026 honoree cohort experienced a 7.1% smaller maximum drawdown, returned to prior highs 10.1% faster, and spent 14.4% less time below prior peak levels. In September 2022, a key stress month, the cohort declined 12.5% less than the benchmark. The report also found 104% upside capture and 97% downside capture, highlighting that strong programs support resilience when conditions turn.
These points support how the value of ethics and compliance work resonates beyond the function. Strong E&C programs help reduce surprises, strengthen decision-making, protect trust, and safeguard the intangible assets that increasingly drive enterprise value. While the report noted that stock performance is the outcome, the operating system is what organizations can control.
Performance & Program Maturity
Inside the Ethics Premium connects concrete signals of program maturity—such as governance, written standards, training and communication, risk assessment and detection, culture measurement, third-party risk management, and impact reporting—to what earns World’s Most Ethical Companies honors. But they are also at the heart of what builds strong financial performance and resiliency.
The report also highlights what leading programs are doing now. They are improving board reporting, using root-cause taxonomy to learn from issues, and creating policies employees can actually use. They are designing more employee-centric training. Increasing transparency around investigation and discipline data . And equipping managers with tools to lead ethical conversations with their teams.
The Ethics Premium reflects correlation, not causation, and this analysis is at the cohort level, rather than by individual company. Still, for E&C leaders looking for organizational buy-in, this report offers credible evidence that investment in integrity aligns with stronger, more durable outcomes over time.
Download the full Inside the Ethics Premium® report to explore the data, the methodology, and the practical signals that can help ethics and compliance leaders strengthen the case for continued investment in program maturity.
Author Bio
Bill Coffin | Editor-in-Chief, Ethisphere Magazine, Ethisphere
Bill Coffin is the Editor-in-Chief of Ethisphere Magazine and supports the larger content strategy of Ethisphere. He is an internationally recognized writer and editorial leader in the fields of ethics, compliance, insurance and risk management. His work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, Forbes and Fortune, as well as Compliance Week, National Underwriter, Risk Management, Best’s Review and other B2B media. Previously, Bill served as Director, Senior Editor at AIG, leading content strategy for one of the world’s largest insurance companies.
