There is a very good reason why financial statements must be audited by an external auditor: Because it builds trust.
NEW YORK (PRWEB) November 13, 2021
The event “HOW CAN ESG EXTERNAL ASSURANCE BUILD TRUST” will be held on 26th of November at 11:00 am UTC, 12:00 pm London and 07:00 am New York. It will be broadcast on the website http://www.sustainfinance.org.
The discussion will be hosted by Ilkay Demirdag, ESG and Investor Relations Strategist. It will be organized as a joint event by SustainFinance and Argüden Governance Academy and will be powered by InstaaCoders Technologies.
At the event, our recent article “ESG Disclosure: Four Ways External Assurance Can Build Trust” will be discussed. https://blogs.cfainstitute.org/investor/2021/11/09/esg-disclosure-how-can-external-assurance-help-build-trust/
The article is published by CFA Institute Enterprising Investor and authored by Usman Hayat, former CEO of the Audit Oversight Board, Pakistan & Executive Director at the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan and Kubra Koldemir Sustainability Business Writer at SustainFinance & Researcher at Argüden Governance Academy.
There is a very good reason why financial statements must be audited by an external auditor: Because it builds trust. The question is, how can ESG assurance build trust in ESG disclosures when the external audit, the most advanced form of assurance, is struggling with a trust deficit?
Unlike accounting and auditing matters, ESG issues are diverse. Disclosure and assurance are mostly voluntary and have lots of built-in flexibility. A company with assorted sustainability issues and multiple locations may pick and choose among the issues and geographies it reports on. Indeed, some firms may choose not to report on certain criteria or locations. Yet sustainability reporting is critical at a local level.
Sustainability Governance Scorecard, an impact research that covers ESG compliant companies across 10 sectors and 7 countries, demonstrates the integrated report of Coca-Cola İçecek (CCI) as a good practice example of sustainability reporting. CCI produces, distributes and sells sparkling and still beverages o Coca-Cola products for Azerbaijan, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkey, where it is based. It is listed on Borsa Istanbul and reports its performance on sustainability topics separately for each of the countries in which it operates. Between 2011 and 2020, CCI sought external assurance on its water and energy usage, among other issues.