ACCA welcomes the opportunity to provide views in response to the IFRS Foundation’s exposure draft (ED) on proposed amendments to the IFRS Foundation Due Process Handbook. We hope that our comments, which include feedback from our ACCA Global Forum for Corporate Reporting, are a helpful contribution to this process.
ACCA has consistently advocated for a global approach to the development of principles-based reporting standards which provide a high-quality comprehensive baseline for corporate reporting. To this end, we reiterate that it is crucial to, as far as possible, leverage and build on existing requirements or other materials from other standard-setting/similar bodies, with the resulting proposed requirements being subject to the relevant applicable IFRS Foundation’s due process.
As standard-setting progresses, it is important to ensure that the reporting catalyses the necessary systemic change: that operational changes take place in the entities making these disclosures; better quality of information becomes available to investors, who will then use these disclosures to allocate capital more efficiently and responsibly. We believe that for this to happen, widespread application of integrated thinking by entities as well as integrative thinking by finance professionals are necessary, where information connections lead to quality decision-making and sustainable value creation.
Further, we believe that the ISSB is best placed to lead development of supplementary materials centrally to ensure greater interoperability and consistent application of the IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards across jurisdictions, leveraging the ISSB Partnership Framework for Capacity Building (Partnership Framework) as much as possible. As such, we would appreciate greater clarity on how the Partnership Framework interacts with the Handbook, as well as the ISSB’s expectations of how stakeholders in the reporting ecosystem (including partners of the Partnership Framework) can work together in making best collaborative use of already-limited resources in the profession.
To read the response in full, please download the response document found on this page.
