Lab Events

Financial Reporting Lab ESEF event -  Friday 13th September 2019

Your chance to get involved in the UK Digital Annual Report and Accounts field trial - Following on from the successful UK Digital Reporting Forum event in Dec 2018, the Financial Reporting Lab is hosting a field trial for UK companies to help prepare for the upcoming European Single Electronic Format (ESEF) regulation.

 The introduction of the ESEF across Europe in 2020 is going to lead to a significant change to the current annual reporting process for listed companies across Europe. While the regulations have now been released, much of the practical issues that surround their implementation are yet to be considered.
 
This one-day event will allow you to get some hands-on experience of the tagging process, see a number of the tools in action and participate in peer-based roundtables to consider issues such as how the design process fits in, the role of the board and investor views. 
The event will be held at the Financial Reporting Councils office on Friday the 13^th of September and will start at 9:30 and will end at 3:30
 
Spaces are limited - if you are interested in attending, please email financialreportinglab@frc.org.uk.  We would also be happy to discuss further details of the event if that would be helpful.

For a summary of the event please see here.

Reporting of performance event Joint FRC and ICAS - 19th March 2019

In March Lab co-hosted an event with ICAS on the reporting of performance, with investors, accountancy firms, companies and other organisations represented. The event was chaired by Guy Jubb, Chair of ICAS Research Panel and former Global Head of Governance and Stewardship at Standard Life Investments.
 
Two academics presented ICAS-sponsored research about non-financial KPIs - Lorenzo Simoni from the University of Florence presented his research ‘Are non-financial KPIs in annual reports really ‘key’’; and Lyndie Bane presented her research ‘Non-financial performance – are your non-financial KPIs useful?’. Phil Fitz-Gerald, Director of the Lab, then gave some observations from the Lab, in which he outlined that many of the academic findings were mirrored by what we heard from investors and companies as part of our performance metrics project last year. That project had found that investors want the reporting of performance to be aligned to strategy, transparent, in context, consistent and reliable.

UK Digital Reporting Forum - 6 December 2018

Regulations, expectations and technology are driving an acceleration in the digitisation of corporate reporting across Europe. This half day event provides an opportunity for preparers and other stakeholders to learn about what to expect from changes to European regulation and what companies and others might learn in their own digital reporting transition. 

Slides for the event are available here.
 

Programme of activities

• 9:30am to 9:40am -  “Introduction and welcome” – Philip Fitz-Gerald, Director of the Financial Reporting Lab at the FRC.
• 9:40am to 10:00am - “Structured data basics/XBRL 101” – Jon Rowden, iXBRL Services Leader at PwC, will take us through the basics of structured data and XBRL, covering some of the history, uses and developments.
• 10:00am to 10:20am - “Regulation, why, where, what and when?” – Jennifer Guest, Project Director at the FRC, will talk about the European Single Electronic Format requirements, their current status and the scope of the regulations.
• 10:20am to 10:45am - Panel 1 “Current state of reporting in the UK and looking forward” - Our first panel will provide a response from the point of view of preparers (Roy Tooley, Head of Corporate and Board Secretariat at Aviva PLC), investors (Alison Thomas, Consultant), and communications (Sallie Pilot, Director – Chief Engagement and Insight Officer at  Black Sun). They will explore some of the key themes in digital reporting, and highlight some of the questions, concerns and opportunities arising from the move towards structured data in annual reports.
• 11:00am to 11:45am - Panel 2 “What can we learn from international developments” – In our second panel session we will hear four different perspectives on how XBRL is being used and developed for reporting across the world, and the lessons we can learn. The panel features John Turner, CEO at XBRL International Inc , Andie Wood, Senior Director of Data Modelling at Workiva Inc., Marshall Matthews, Senior Manager – Corporate Reporting Services, iXBRL Accounts at KPMG and Chie Mitsui, Data Analyst at Nomura Research Institute.
• 11:45am to 11:55am - “What would be useful?” – Phil Fitz-Gerald and Thomas Toomse-Smith (FRC) will then open the floor for questions and thoughts on future activities supporting developments in digital reporting.
• 11:55 to 12:00 - “Next Steps” – Phil Fitz-Gerald will close the session and summarise next steps.

If you are attending via livestream and would like to pose questions please email them to financialreportinglab@frc.org.uk

Financial Reporting Lab < reporting NOW > Conference

The Lab held its annual conference on Thursday 21st June 2018

The conference was opened by Sir Win Bischoff, Chairman of the Financial Reporting Council. Sir Win highlighted the unique nature of Lab in encouraging good reporting by companies by finding practical, market-led solutions. In the first conference session, we revisited two of the Lab’s past reports, 'Business model reporting' and 'Risk and viability reporting', and we presented our first report on the performance metrics project, which was released to coincide with the Lab conference. 

The topic for the first panel session was ‘Reporting Past’, and this session was moderated by Thomas Toomse-Smith (Project Director, Financial Reporting Lab), with the following panel members:

• Susan Swabey (Company Secretary, Smith and Nephew)
• Andrew Tusa (Managing Director Corporate Broking, Barclays)
• Freddie Woolfe (Head of Responsible Investment and Stewardship, Old Mutual Global Investors).

The second panel was moderated by Sallie Pilot (Director, Black Sun) and focussed on the ‘Reporting Future’. The panellists were:

• Stephanie Maier (Director, Responsible Investment, HSBC Global Asset Management)
• Douglas Radcliffe (Group Investor Relations Director, Lloyds Banking Group)
• Ben Yeoh (Senior Portfolio Manager, RBC Global Asset Management)

Finally, we heard from Thomas Toomse-Smith, who provided an update on the Lab's Digital Future project, including a summary of the Lab's recent report on blockchain.

Here is a full recording of the conference, along with the slides and a summary.

Imagining the new possibilities for organisations to communicate and engage

We are holding a radically different initiative to develop new forward-looking ideas and to engage with broader stakeholders. Our aim is to take a fresh approach to reimagine the future of reporting and how  business can engage and communicate.
 
Over the last fifty years there has been significant progress and improvements in the quality of timely, relevant and trustworthy reported information which has fostered investment and improved overall confidence. However, in a rapidly evolving world technology is transforming business, economies and societies at a pace that is unprecedented. New business models are emerging as existing ones are being disrupted, creating significant challenges to the way information is prepared and how it is delivered to its users.
 
The annual report, the cornerstone of corporate reporting, has become a compendium of different reporting requirements that have been placed on companies. There has been a steady increase in the rules and regulations for disclosure in response to demands for more transparency. The result is that the size of annual reports has ballooned with companies publishing information that may seem overly complicated and indigestible. Corporate reporting needs to address these challenges to remain relevant for the future.
 
The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) and the FRC are facilitating this initiative to identify new possibilities, outside of the current reporting framework, for both current and future businesses to engage and communicate with their stakeholders.

As part of our work in this area we will be hosting an Innovation Summit in July where radical ideas can be explored and developed into new forward-thinking solutions. We will be bringing together key players and new and different perspectives to explore:

• Who are the wider stakeholders that business in the 21^st century needs to engage with, and what are their information needs?

• How can business best provide for these needs in a transforming digital world?

• How might we create a broader engagement, communication and reporting platform that connects companies and their wider stakeholders?

This partnership work is being led by ICAEW’s AuditFutures programme and the FRC’s Financial Reporting Lab.

 
Further details about the event will be coming soon, in the meantime, if you have any specific questions or would like to be considered to attend the event, please contact: Martin.Martinoff@icaew.com