SASB and IIRC merger to simplify sustainability disclosure

Earlier this year, https://intuit-payroll.org/ and GRI announced a joint workplan to make it easier for companies to use both sets of standards together. The merger directly responds to calls from global investors and corporates to simplify the corporate reporting landscape, providing the market with a clear solution for communicating about the drivers of enterprise value. Stockholm – One of the main hurdles faced by sustainable investors seeking to integrate ESG considerations into their investment process is the wide diversity and lack of standards for the information published by companies in their corporate disclosures. While in Europe regulatory reforms are underway, in the USA, a number of initiatives have emerged, whose adoption could be leveraged on a global scale. To avoid unnecessary regulatory complexity, a consolidation of these initiatives appears to be on the way. The SASB’s standards are based on five sustainability dimensions and provide industry-specific topics and metrics for use in corporate sustainability reporting.

Graeme Pitkethly, CFO of Unilever supported the new initiative.“Unilever advocates for a multi-stakeholder business model. Integrated reporting is a key enabler ensuring business risks are clearly understood, and that there is comparable reporting. We hope this merger will be a catalyst for the harmonization of sustainability standards and metrics,” Pitkethly concludes. “Understanding the financial risks related to these sustainability impacts on a company’s bottom line and value creation are critical for providers of financial capital. The formation of the Value Reporting Foundation represents a significant step towards a better representation of sustainability related risks in financial reporting. The first key initiative to be advanced by the foundation will be its work toward a comprehensive corporate reporting system alongside partners at CDP, CDSB and the GRI.

IPSASB takes next step in public sector sustainability reporting

“We have listened to the strong demand from businesses and investors for a simplified corporate reporting landscape,” Janine Guillot, CEO, Value Reporting Foundation says. “By combining the tools, resources and relationships of SASB and IIRC, the Value Reporting Foundation will continue to advance progress towards a more coherent landscape and continue to support the important efforts of the IFRS Foundation. The end result will be comparable, consistent and reliable information that enables more holistic decision making by businesses and investors,” Guillot says. The end result will be comparable, consistent and reliable information that enables more holistic decision making by businesses and investors.”

It is made up of over 30 investor organizations in order to help shape the Framework by providing an investor’s perspective on the shortfalls in current corporate reporting. The International Integrated Reporting Council , of which Mervyn King is chair, was convened in order to aid businesses and investors as they begin to adopt Integrated Reporting. The IIRC was formerly known as the International Integrated Reporting Committee, being renamed in 2011. The Prince’s Accounting for Sustainability Project acted as the Secretariat for the IIRC until January 2012. IR reflects the broad and longer-term consequences of the decisions organizations make, based on a wide range of factors, in order to create and sustain value. IR enables an organization to communicate in a clear, articulate way how it is drawing on all the resources and relationships it utilises to create and preserve value in the short, medium and long term, helping investors to manage risks and allocate resources most efficiently. It means the integrated representation of a company’s performance in terms of both financial and other value relevant information.

Introducing the Value Reporting Foundation: SASB and IIRC merge to give ESG reporting a trim

The ISSB encourages companies and investors to continue to provide full support for, and use of, the SASB Standards. The Integrated Reporting Framework is a principles-based, multi-capital, framework that is used to accelerate the adoption of integrated reporting across the world. The IIRC, in collaboration with UNPRI set up an Investor Network as part of its Pilot Programme.

• It also concluded that the primary audience of integrated reports is investors in order to aid their allocation of financial capital.
• Together, this coalition shares the view that communication about businesses’ value creation should be the next step in the evolution of corporate reporting’.
• We partner with influential companies across industries to drive meaningful sustainability progress, action, and conversation.

The purpose of the Value Reporting Foundation is to merge SASB and IIRC into a credible, international organization that maintains the integrated reporting framework, advocates integrated thinking, and sets sustainability disclosure standards for enterprise value creation. It is a major advancement towards building a more comprehensive and coherent corporate reporting system. Over recent years, investors and other stakeholders have increasingly demanded sustainable business practices from companies in all areas of their businesses including environmental, social and governance .

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The Value Reporting Foundation developed tools that connect sustainability, disclosure and financial statements using as its basis the merged work of the International Integrated Reporting Council , London, and the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board , San Francisco. Its goal was to give investors and companies a unified sustainability reporting framework. The IFRS Foundation is a not-for-profit, public interest organisation established to develop high-quality, understandable, enforceable and globally accepted accounting and sustainability disclosure standards. There are simultaneous and complementary projects underway to clarify the corporate reporting landscape.

• SASB Standards provide investors with consistent, comparable and reliable information on the ESG factors most relevant to financial performance and enterprise value.
• Over recent years, investors and other stakeholders have increasingly demanded sustainable business practices from companies in all areas of their businesses including environmental, social and governance .
• It seems that the weight of these organizations, with partnership from global security commissions, SASB metrics along with GRI and TCFD form the baseline for a global sustainability standard.

The Iirc And Sasb Form The Value Reporting Foundation Foundation is a non-profit organization, established with the mission to establish industry-specific ESG disclosure standards for companies. The standards set by SASB are designed to enable investors to assess the materiality of reported sustainability information, and to compare companies on these metrics on a global basis. Guillot said the IIRC’s guidance and SASB’s standards are complementary and are used together by many organisations to guide their corporate sustainability reporting.