FRC announces new approach to publishing corporate reporting reviews

News types: Company Specific, Corporate Reports, Generic Announcement, Operating Procedures, Policies and Responsibilities, Policy Statements, Publications

Published: 26 March 2021

The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) has today, for the first time, published summaries of its corporate reporting reviews . Each year, the FRC conducts over 200 corporate reporting reviews to assess whether company reports and accounts comply with relevant accounting and reporting requirements.

This increased transparency is aligned with a recommendation of Sir John Kingman’s Independent Review of the FRC that reviews should be made publicly available. Due to company law requirements, summaries can only be published with the consent of individual companies. As part of the recently launched consultation Restoring trust in audit and corporate governance the Government is consulting on proposals to allow the regulator to publish summaries without the consent of companies, once sufficient safeguards around confidential information are in place.

The FRC previously published the names of companies reviewed, whether a full review was conducted and whether substantiative correspondence had been entered into, without providing further details of review findings.

The FRC’s Executive Director of Supervision, David Rule, said:

Publishing summaries of corporate reporting reviews is an important step towards improving the transparency of the FRC’s monitoring work and an example of the FRC taking forward the Government’s programme to restore trust in audit and corporate governance.”

Full list of company reviews

Notes to editors:

The FRC selects company accounts for review based on criteria including size, risk and industry sector.