Project to Review the Complexity and Relevance in Corporate Reporting

The FRC Plan & Budget 2008/09 includes a project to review the complexity and relevance of current corporate reporting requirements (“the complexity project”). The complexity project will consider whether corporate reporting requirements are disproportionate to their intended benefits and whether there are opportunities for improvement. It will address the risk that these requirements, and related influential guidance, are contributing to the increasing complexity of corporate reports without making them more useful or understandable.

The objective of the project is to:

Consult with different participants involved in regulating, communicating and using corporate information, and determine the causes of complexity. Develop and promote, both nationally and internationally, recommendations aimed at reducing complexity in order to make corporate reports more understandable.

The project will focus primarily on the ongoing mandatory corporate reporting requirements for UK listed companies.   This includes the financial and narrative aspects of all interim, half-yearly and annual reports, but not offer documents.  There is also acknowledgement of the need to keep an eye on voluntary reporting such as preliminary announcements and annual reviews to ensure the project is comprehensive in its analysis and findings. 

The complexity project team has distributed a questionnaire throughout the FRC to all board members, operating board members and staff in order to help identify whether there is general agreement that there is excessive complexity in the UK corporate reporting environment, and if so what are the principal complex areas. 

In order to form a balanced view on the causes of complexity and how complexity may be reduced, the coming months will see the project team engaging as many interested parties as possible through the formation of a Complexity Advisory Panel as well as face-to-face interviews with corporate reporting users and preparers. 


Materials for the complexity advisory panel members

FRC press releases and articles

Links to third party websites

Complexity advisory panel meeting minutes

Responses to Discussion Paper 'Louder than Words'