FRC to publish its corporate reporting reviews

The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) has announced that it will for the first time, publish 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 made by Sir John Kingman’s Independent Review of the FRC that suggested all reviews should be made publicly available.

However, due to company law requirements, summaries can only be published with the consent of individual companies.

As part of the recently launched audit and corporate governance reformation, the government is currently undergoing consultations on proposals to allow the regulator to publish summaries without the consent of companies, once sufficient safeguards around confidential information are in place.

David Rule, executive director of supervision, FRC, 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.”