The report is structured around the FRC’s overall assessment of corporate reporting and in particular focuses on those areas which fall within the remit of the FRC’s reviews: the financial statements and the strategic report. It provides findings for the year, highlights where the FRC see room for improvement and sets out the FRC’s expectations for the coming reporting season.

Review the press release and full report on the FRC website. A summary is available on our Deloitte UK website.

The glacial progress indicates that our current approaches are not working. In Canada, less than one-fifth of all leadership roles are held by women. And women’s representation on company boards is also still low, changing at 1–2 per cent every year—not fast enough to reach long-term targets. Other under-represented groups’ experiences can be even worse, from consistently lower wages for immigrant workers to a dismal employment rate for people with disabilities.

Review the full article on the Conference Board of Canada's website.

The AASB recently published published the bulletin Climate-related and other emerging risks disclosures: assessing financial statement materiality using AASB Practice Statement 2, with AASB Practice Statement 2 being essentially the same as the IASB Practice Statement on Materiality. The paper now released provides an outline of the guidance in the practice statement and motivation behind the issuance of the bulletin on climate‐related risk disclosures, key takeaways and recommendations, and the AASB's suggestions on the type of evidence that would be useful for standard-setters.

Climate-related Risk and Financial Statements: Implications for Regulators, Preparers, Auditors and Users was published in the Australian Accounting Review and can be accessed free of charge in the Wiley Online Library.

For this agenda item, background notes have been prepared by the UNCTAD secretariat to facilitate deliberations. The paper can be downloaded from the UNCTAD website:

• Practical implementation, including measurement, of core indicators for entity reporting on the contribution towards the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals: Review of case studies

Since the thirty-fifth session of ISAR, UNCTAD has completed and published the Guidance on Core Indicators for Entity Reporting on Contribution towards Implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals.

The core indicators contained in the current version of the Guidance are follows:

A review of the case studies provided evidence that environmental and social indicators were more difficult to report on than economic and institutional indicators.

General information on the session including a provisional agenda for the meeting is available here.

Further publication of interest in the context of the meeting are available on the UNCTAD website:

• International Accounting and Reporting Issues: 2018 Review
• Guidance on core indicators for entity reporting on contribution towards implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals

For a variety of reasons and based on analysis of several approaches to disclosure, expect increasing stakeholder demands are expected for more transparent and higher quality ESG reporting.

Read the full blog on the NACD's website.

Below is an analysis of all changes that were made to the work plan since our last analysis on October 1, 2019.

Stan­dard-set­ting projects

• Primary Financial Statements — Exposure draft is expected in December 2019 (previously fourth quarter of 2019).

Main­te­nance projects

• 2019 Comprehensive Review of the IFRS for SMEs Standard — the request for information is now expected in the first quarter of 2020 (previously fourth quarter of 2019)
• Accounting Policies and Accounting Estimates — dis­cus­sions on the project direction happened in October 2019 (previously fourth quarter of 2019).
• Onerous Contracts — Cost of Fulfilling a Contract (Amendments to IAS 37) — An IFRS amendment is expect in the first half of 2020.

Research projects

• Dynamic Risk Management — core model will occur in December 2019 (previously fourth quarter of 2019).
• Financial Instruments With Characteristics of Equity — decision on the project’s direction will occur in the first quarter of 2020 (pre­vi­ously fourth quarter of 2019).
• Pensions Benefits That Depend on Asset Returns — Research review is expected in December 2019 (previously fourth quarter of 2019).
• Post-Implementation Review of IFRS 10, IFRS 11 and IFRS 12 — This project is now under research (previously listed under maintenance projects).
• Provisions — Research review is expected in January 2020 (previously fourth quarter of 2019).
• Subsidiaries That Are SMEs — Research review is expected in January 2020 (previously fourth quarter of 2019).

Other projects

• IFRS Taxonomy Update — Interest Rate Benchmark Reform (Amend­ments to IFRS 9, IAS 39 and IFRS 7) —a proposed IFRS Taxonomy Update was issued in October 2019. Feedback update is expected in December 2019.

The revised IASB work plan is available on the Board's website.

In his speech, he also highlights on the types of information increasingly used by investors that are currently outside the audit, including alternative performance measures, or what I will call in this speech Non-GAAP financial measures, key performance indicators (KPIs), XBRL, and sustainability disclosure. Finally, it helps to start conversations among investors, audit firms, and other stakeholders about relevance and possible changes that will help prevent auditors from becoming the weavers of the 21st century.

Review the full speech on the PCAOB's website.

The proliferation of cyber breaches can be attributed to several factors, primarily that more companies are using more computer systems for more tasks.

Review the full article on Audit Analytics' website.

The paper Standard Precision and Aggressive Financial Reporting—The Influence of Incentive Horizon will be presented. Here's a copy of the abstract:

The extant literature on standard precision suggests that financial statement preparers are less likely to make aggressive financial reporting decisions under less precise, principles-based accounting standards as compared to under more precise, rules-based accounting standards. We extend this line of research by examining how the incentive horizon of financial statement preparers influences earnings management behavior. Consistent with prior literature, we find evidence that more precise standards lead to more income-increasing earnings management behavior than do less precise standards when the incentive horizon is short-term in nature. However, when the incentive horizon is long-term, more precise standards are associated with financial reporting decisions that reduce current income relative to less precise standards. Importantly, the findings demonstrate that the effects of standard precision are changed by the incentive time horizon, and the market implications of standard precision cannot be fully understood when precision is studied without considering the incentives of decision makers.

As companies prepare for the 2020 proxy season and engage with shareholders, directors should understand the current state of ESG risk reporting in public filings.

Review the full blog on the NACD BoardTalk's website.