If my company is applicable for the Equity Mechanism, how is this applied to my certification process?

We are changing parts of the Equity Mechanism to align with the expectations of our assurance partners and the Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition Directive.

Implementation in two phases

For at least Q1 and Q2 2026, companies facing operational barriers due to where they are based use the Equity Mechanism via the Variance Mechanism to opt out of B Lab Standard requirement(s). Read section 4.2.2. Requesting a Variance in the Certification Requirements. The company is then not required to demonstrate conformity with those requirement(s) during the audit. There are two conditions to receiving this type of variance:

1. The company’s location captured in their assessment is a country or territory with “some barriers” (e.g. Brazil) or “more barriers” (e.g. Kenya). The full list is available in the article How the new B Lab Standards requirements are tailored to each company's context?

2. The company requests a variance for a sub-requirement that is eligible for the Equity Mechanism. Under each sub-requirement, there is a field “Eligible for equity mechanism?” with either a “Yes” or “No”.

B Lab is exploring how to integrate the Equity Mechanism into B Impact. This would replace the initial approach of using the Variance Mechanism. The exact timeline for this work is still in progress.