07 November 2018 
Karel Thomas, Executive Director
Extended External Reporting and Integrated Reporting are probably the last things Finance Directors want to think about as their final Council and Court meetings, to sign off annual reports and accounts, get closer. But the demand for reporting that can be read and understood by more people is growing. "Major international corporate reporting standard setters and framework providers have announced a ground-breaking new two-year project focused on driving better alignment in the corporate reporting landscape, to make it easier for companies to prepare effective and coherent disclosures that meet the information needs of capital markets and society" and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and PwC this week released Enhancing the credibility of non-financial information, "focused on what investors need in order to make decisions that consider non-financial information – that is, information outside of financial statements including environmental, social and governance (ESG) metrics." The HE sector could discount all this as irrelevant as rules for most universities are different from the corporate world, but to do so would ignore good practice and thinking. If any HE institution is thinking seriously about exploring Integrated Thinking and Reporting, AdvanceHE have launched a new programme, building on the success of this year's pilot project.
