ICAS Plans for Short form Corporate Report

ICAS has published guidelines for a planned new style of corporate report designed to provide a concise, readable summary of company results.

Making Corporate Reports Relevant outlines details of a short-form report, which would be around 30 pages or less and which the institute says would be the key communication document for a company’s stakeholders.

This report would summarise key aspects of performance and prospects, with the detailed disclosures such as the full financial statements, governance information and sustainability reports available from the company’s website.

ICAS says the new report would include ‘summary financial information, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and the significant judgements made by management in preparing the report – while remaining consistent with the full financial statements’.

The proposal is based on earlier work by ICAS, Making Corporate Reports Readable, which was issued in 2010 for consultation. ICAS says that feedback on its proposed short form report has been positive, and that there is a general acceptance that the current state of corporate reporting is unacceptable.

David Wood, executive director of technical policy at ICAS said: ‘What we would like, as a next step, is for a company to pilot the report.’