BARNOWL INFO SHARING SESSION:The Integrated Report and Integrated Thinking in the reign of King IV

BarnOwl Info Sharing session: 29 July 2016

The Integrated Report and Integrated Thinking in the reign of King IV

By Leigh Roberts CA(SA) – IRC of SA –CEO

We were honoured to have Leigh Roberts, the CEO of IRC (Integrated Reporting Committee) of SA presenting at BarnOwl’s info sharing session on the 29^th July 2016. There was a great turn out which is an indication of how much interest there is in integrated reporting and the need for us to hear the latest developments and thinking. Leigh has been integral in the development of integrated reporting in South Africa and internationally. She is the chairman of the Working Group of the IRC which is responsible for developing technical guidance. She was involved in the development of the International Framework being a member of the Technical Task Force and Working Group of the International Integrated Reporting Council.

The definition of Integrated Reporting as per the International <IR> Framework is: “a concise communication about how an organisation’s strategy, governance, performance and prospects, in the context of its external environment, lead to the creation of value in the short, medium and long term”. The vision of the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) is “to align capital allocation and corporate behaviour to the wider goals of financial stability and sustainable development through the cycle of integrated thinking and reporting”.

A few salient points which I took out of Leigh’s presentation are:

• that there is a move towards ‘concise’ integrated reporting with reference to the other detailed reports such as AFS, Sustainability Report/ information, compliance reports etc.
• that in the past we spoke about ‘triple bottom line’ reporting relating to financial, social and environmental. This thinking has been enhanced to the ‘six capitals’ being Financial, Manufactured, Intellectual, Human, Social & Relationships and Natural.
• The importance of realising the connectivity of things, thinking about consequences, thinking about the longer term: The creation of value is often phrased as positive taking into account intended consequences only but ignores negative, unintended outcomes. Ignoring or down-playing the longer term consequences of decisions and actions is detrimental to business viability and without being over dramatic is detrimental to the planet and human race in the long run.

The draft King IV ‘rests’ on the thinking and concepts of International <IR> Framework and frequently references it:

• Concept of Multi-capitals – Financial, Manufactured, Intellectual, Human, Social & Relationships and Natural
• Integrated Thinking
• Value Creation
• Integrated Report is a Practice Recommendation (and concise)

You can download Leigh’s presentation here and download a video of the session here. Once again thank you Leigh for your most enlightening presentation and to all those who braved the traffic to come to our info sharing event. We would also like to thank the IIASA (Institute of Internal Audit South Africa) who are major participants of integrated reporting in SA and for their input.

If you would like to join the IRC database for IRC events and information papers, feel free to send an email with your name and organisation to leigh31@telkomsa.net. You can also find more information on www.integratedreportingsa.org. You are also welcome to visit Leigh’s website at: http://leighrobertsconsulting.com/

Written by: Jonathan Crisp

Director – BarnOwl GRC and Audit software

About BarnOwl:

BarnOwl is a fully integrated governance, risk management, compliance and audit software solution used by over 200 organisations in Africa, Europe and the UK. BarnOwl supports best practice risk management, compliance and audit frameworks (e.g. COSO, ISO31000, Compliance Institute’s handbook, International Professional Practice Framework), whilst offering a highly flexible and configurable parameter-driven system allowing you to configure BarnOwl to meet your specific requirements.