IIRC and SASB form the Value Reporting Foundation

July 12, 2021

In June 2021, The International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) and the Sustainability accounting Standards Board (SASB) officially announced their merger into a unified organization, the Value Reporting Foundation.

The Value Reporting Foundation offers a comprehensive suite of resources designed to help businesses and investors develop a shared understanding of enterprise value – how it is created, preserved, and eroded over time. The resources include Integrated Thinking Principles, the Integrated Reporting Framework and SASB Standards.

  • Integrated Thinking Principles drive an improved understanding of how value is created in the short, medium and long-term
  • The Integrated Reporting Framework supports effective reporting on strategy, governance, performance, prospects and business model through a multi-capital lens
  • SASB Standards provide investors with consistent, comparable and reliable information on the ESG factors most relevant to financial performance and enterprise value.

These tools, already adopted in over 70 countries, comprise the 21st century market infrastructure needed to develop, manage and communicate strategy that creates long-term value and drives improved performance. The Value Reporting Foundation does not see disclosure as an end in and of itself, but as a tool to enable more holistic business and investor decision making.

The <IR> Framework and the SASB Standards are already complementary resources. Together, they provide insight into performance on the complete range of factors that impact long-term value creation:

  • The <IR> Framework provides principles-based guidance for reporting structure and content, while SASB Standards provide industry-specific disclosure topics and metrics to help understand sustainability risks and opportunities in greater detail.
  • There is close alignment between the <IR> Framework’s capitals and SASB Standards’ sustainability dimensions: SASB Standards already provide industry-specific disclosure topics and metrics for four of the six capitals in the <IR> Framework, enabling industry-specific content for an integrated report.
  • It is up to each business to select the appropriate disclosure frameworks, depending on business needs and the needs of the users of the information. For businesses that choose to, the Value Reporting Foundation will facilitate the use of the <IR> Framework and the SASB Standards together and thus better enable organizations to plan and communicate their ability to create value over the short, medium and long term.

For more information, please visit https://www.valuereportingfoundation.org.

Value Reporting Foundation strategy