Arnaud is a founder of his own accountancy firm in France with 6 partners and 150 staff. He has been the Vice-Président of the French Chartered Accountants PAOs for four years and he is now the CEO of Federation Internationale des Experts-Comptables Francophone, or FIDEF, the Fédération of the French-speaking Chartered Accountants and Auditors National Institutes representing 55 member PAOs in 37 countries.

Yasmine is a Technical Advisor in the IFAC SMP AG. She is also currently a Director – Governance at the AICPA. Yasmine oversees women’s initiatives programs, firm services and international projects within AICPA. Prior to joining the AICPA, Yasmine worked for CPA firms of various sizes in the US and Canada: a big four, a national firm and a local firm. 

Ainslie van Onselen is Chief Executive Officer of Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand (CA ANZ), a role she has held since May 2020, and Chair of Chartered Accountants Worldwide, representing more than 2 million members and students across more than 190 countries. She is also a Non-Executive Director of the Global Accounting Alliance.

Ainslie brings more than two decades of experience spanning corporate law, board governance across ASX-listed, not-for-profit and government organisations, and senior executive leadership at Westpac, one of Australia’s largest banks.

As CEO, Ainslie is leading CA ANZ through significant change—strengthening the profession’s role in upholding trust and integrity, while delivering digital, data and AI transformation to enhance the experience of more than 142,000 members.

She is a strong advocate for ethics, inclusion and the public interest, and for the role of Chartered Accountants in shaping a sustainable, future-focused economy. She has led the development of CA ANZ’s Professional Conduct Framework and Going Further roadmap and continues to champion global sustainability and ESG standards.

This week the IAASB hosted two different webinars on consultations that are currently open for public comment. The recordings of these webinars can be found on the IAASB’s website as listed below.

The first webinar was hosted on June 10, 2020 and covered the current Public Consultation on Proposed Guidance: Extended External Reporting (EER) Assurance. The recording and presentation slides of this session can be found here.

The second webinar was hosted on June 11, 2020 and covered the recently released Exposure Draft of Proposed ISA 600 (Revised), Special Considerations—Audits of Group Financial Statements (Including the Work of Component Auditors). The recording and presentation slides of this session can be found here.

The ISA 600 Task Force will host a second webinar on August 13, 2020 8:00 am – 9:30am EDT, where time will be spent answering questions in regard to the Proposed ISA 600 (Revised). You can submit any questions you may have to jaspervandenhout@iaasb.org till July 24, 2020.

To continue the dialogue on corporate reporting and value creation, IFAC has posted a summary of its feedback on the recent World Economic Forum (WEF) consultation “Toward Common Metrics and Consistent Reporting of Sustainable Value Creation.”

It is well acknowledged by investors, business leaders, and other stakeholders that, in addition to financials, effective corporate reporting must also measure value creation, sustainability and environmental, social, and governance factors. Such enhanced corporate reporting is needed to maintain confidence in companies and financial markets, to better meet stakeholder needs, and to inform business planning for long-term success.

The WEF consultation makes a valuable contribution in the dialogue amongst all stakeholders who share a common interest in relevant, reliable, and comparable reporting of this information.

In its consultation response, IFAC focuses on six takeaways to keep the global conversation moving forward:

• Rationalization efforts must work toward a global system. IFAC strongly supports a global approach to ESG metrics and disclosures.
• Timeliness is key. Alignment, harmonization, and convergence must take place before regional or jurisdiction-specific initiatives become standard practice.
• Take a modular approach. Build upon existing high-quality metrics and disclosures.
• There is a role for both standards and frameworks. For example, the Integrated Reporting Framework.
• Assurance is needed to deliver confidence in corporate reporting.  Assurance is most effective when applied against metrics and disclosures that follow clear best practices or standards.  
• The accounting profession must remain engaged in the conversation. The profession is critical to evidence-based decision making, reliable information gathering, and consistent, comparable corporate reporting—be it ESG-focused or otherwise. 

IFAC stands ready, as a global voice and convener of the accountancy profession, to facilitate coordination, assimilation, and convergence in sustainable reporting approaches. IFAC supports the WEF consultation as a catalyst to challenge policy makers, regulators, and ESG metric providers to get the job done, now. 

Ongoing and active engagement by the profession—through this initiative and by assisting companies in the implementation of its metrics and disclosures—is an enormous opportunity for the profession to embrace.