The Future of Corporate Disclosure

The growing interest in a company’s sustainability strategy and performance means that solely providing financial information in corporate disclosures will no longer fulfil stakeholder needs in the future. Traditional financial reporting is primarily targeted at capital providers and therefore provides information on the company’s current and future financial performance. Today, a broader focus on non-financial, sustainability-related aspects is required to meet the information needs of other stakeholders, such as employees, customers, suppliers, government and society. Non-financial information is also increasingly important for investors to assess a firm’s risks and opportunities related to sustainability issues, such as climate change, and to understand how the firm is preparing itself for these future challenges. The transition of non-financial reporting—in particular, sustainability reporting—is evolving from voluntarily applied frameworks to mandatory regulatory requirements by standard-setting institutions. The aim is to provide higher transparency and comparability and to build the basis for linking the former separate financial and sustainability reports of a firm on a concise integrated report. A key challenge is the choice (and clear definition) of appropriate performance indicators to achieve comparability between firms. As a result, new rules and formats for corporate reports and for financial, as well as non-financial, disclosures are already appearing on the horizon and will sustainably change the future of corporate reporting. Adapting to these new regulations while balancing the interests of multiple stakeholders will become a continuous challenge for companies and will require them to engage in comprehensive, integrated thinking.