At a glance
Seeing into the future
“If I use corporate disclosures with our traditional audience, the participants in capital markets, you could say that we are currently missing out on future‑oriented information.
“The financial statements stop largely at the balance sheet date. They don’t consider transactions and events that happen in the future.
Yes, we do look ahead when it comes to measurement, especially in fair valuation or impairment assessments, but we don’t take future information into account otherwise. That’s really the bit that currently is missing in informing investors in capital markets.
“If you are a long-term investor, you should actually be taking any impact that the entity has on society and the environment into account, because, ultimately, it may affect your future cash flows.”
Reporting on climate risk
“When it comes to reflecting climate risk, but also climate opportunities, we would hold that our literature is risk and opportunity agnostic. We don’t really care whether a risk is a financial risk, whether it’s credit risk, or whether it’s an ESG risk.
"We are maintaining that if you do have a risk that has the potential of having a material impact on the financial position or the financial performance, you must consider it.”
Technological possibilities
“In financial reporting, it seems that we are still largely paper-based. That is an oddity in a digital world more generally.
“I think we must become smarter in thinking digitally first and think about how we can produce a digital version of that paper-based report.
“At the moment, we only provide reports in certain intervals, be it quarterly or half-yearly or even annually only. If you think about digital, is there a way where it can go to continuous reporting?
“If we want more timely information coming from the entities that don’t just have confirmatory value, but are actually sending signals out to the market, I think we need to open our eyes up and think about new ways.”
