CR reports fail to convince financial sector

Saturday, October 22, 2005

CR reports fail to convince financial sector

The quality of corporate reports on social responsibilities may have risen, but they consistently fail to meet the expectations of a major target group: the financial services sector, with its associated analysts, investors and shareholders. This is one of the key findings of Accounting for Good: The Global Stakeholder Report 2005, a survey of 500 global readers of CR reports from 58 countries, a new report by Pleon. The study found that, although the importance of CR within the financial services sector has increased considerably in the past few years, it is this group that gets the least from sustainability reports. According to the survey, the prime reason for this disparity is that the economic arguments for corporate sustainability and social commitments are not convincingly explained.

Generally however, readers of CR reports are more satisfied with the quality of reports than they were two years ago. For instance, reporting on social issues was described by 55.2 percent of respondents as being “fully” or “to some extent” in line with their expectations (an increase of 6.5 percent from 2003). The survey also revealed that the most important issues of a CR report, from a stakeholder perspective, are the management of human rights, ecological and energy efficiency in business operations, and health and safety of employees.

The full report, as well as a background paper, is available for download from Pleon's website.

http://www.pleon.com/

Blogged on 4:24 AM by Upay

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