People need to be able to rely on corporate information as a basis for their decisions. Trustworthy information strengthens confidence in companies and in markets, creating long-term value.

Non-financial information (NFI) provides a clearer picture of a company’s financial performance than only financial information. NFI is increasingly important for investors and other stakeholders, who ask for assurance on NFI as they want to know whether they can trust the reported information.

Due to different levels of maturity in NFI reporting, professional accountants approach NFI assurance engagements in different ways. Therefore, we examine six key steps for NFI assurance as included in our 2017 discussion paper How to respond to assurance needs on non-financial information?. We requested feedback on these key steps and organised a workshop on the practical  challenges of NFI assurance with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD).

This report analyses the expert feedback we received to both initiatives. We focus on the main challenges these experts identified and what solutions they proposed to strengthen NFI assurance practices.