The official arrival of UKSRS

It's a momentous day for the UK's accounting, finance and sustainability worlds as the UK Government has published its finalised UK Sustainability Reporting Standards via the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade.

While the Financial Conduct Authority continues to consult on how these standards are mandated for publicly listed companies, potentially extending to private companies, the momentum towards comprehensive sustainability reporting has decidedly begun.

What does this mean in reality?
🔢 For accountants, it means they need to get familiar with the language of sustainability reporting on financially material issues impacting their companies.
🌲 For sustainability professionals, it means they will need to up-level their ability to parse out what is financially material information to pass on to the accountants.
📈 For investors of all stripes, it means they will soon have access to much more detailed reporting on the long-term sustainability of the companies they're investing in.
🏣 For publicly listed companies, it means they will soon need to start investing in their staff, training them to speak the language of sustainability reporting alongside their financial statements and the same applies to astute private companies, if they're seeking to attract greater levels of capital from bigger investment pools.

While we're seeing the shift towards greater investments in SMEs and private markets exemplified by the growth of LSEG Alternative Investment Markets and LSEG Private Securities Market PISCES, it would behoove all UK companies to start investing now in learning about the UKSRS and the ISSB Standards on which they are based. This includes their communications teams who should be getting up to speed with the new language of sustainability reporting which is here to stay in the UK, as it is in 40 other jurisdictions globally.

Exciting times ahead!