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While progress is being made, the report, The State of Play: Sustainability Disclosure and Assurance 2019-2022, Trends and Analysis, highlights the need for companies worldwide to move toward a global system of sustainability disclosure requirements. On a positive note, the study found over half of companies use the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) Standards and the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) Framework, which should ease the transition to the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) standards released last year.
“While we’re moving toward commonly accepted global standards, some 87% of companies continued to use a mix of standards and frameworks for reporting,” said David Madon, IFAC’s director of sustainability, policy and regulatory affairs. “That leaves investors and lenders in a bind when it comes to having consistent, comparable and high-quality sustainability information at hand.”
Among the highlights of the updated study:
“When companies use accounting firms for sustainability assurance, they’re more likely to choose the same firm they use to audit their financial statements,” said Susan Coffey, CPA, CGMA, AICPA & CIMA’s CEO of public accounting. “Because the level of confidence with and reliability on sustainability disclosure should be the same as financial information, we expect more companies will recognize that accounting firms are best suited for this critical work. We think this is a likely driver behind the increase from 16% to 23% for U.S. accounting firms performing this work.”
IFAC and AICPA & CIMA partnered to understand the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting and assurance practices on a global basis by capturing reports containing ESG information in 22 jurisdictions. Some 1,400 companies were reviewed – 100 from each of the largest six economies, with 50 companies reviewed in the remaining 16 jurisdictions. The current report includes data from 2019 to 2022. Full methodology is available in the study.