Risks and opportunities externalization in integrated reporting of Argentine banks

Abstract

Integrated reporting is one of the most recent innovations in relation to sustainability and non-financial reporting in the world. It offers a synthetic and holistic view of organizations and their actions with the aim of being an instrument that meets the information needs of markets, society, investors or customers which go beyond the study of financial statements at present.

The purpose of an integrated reporting must be to provide all the companies´ information through a concise, complete and relevant communication of the special history of the organizations that describes the way in which the business model, strategy, governance, performance and prospects lead to value creation in the short, medium and long term by identifying risks and opportunities.

Its study represents a challenge for academic research considering the increasing demand of non-financial information, as well as the constant meetings between several regulatory agencies and normative issuers with the institutionality associated with Integrated Reporting.

This study is part of the research project called “Intellectual capital and value generation in organizations in the context of Integrated Reporting”. One of the specific objectives of this project is to analyze the viability and feasibility of explaining and adequately exposing the organizations´ value generators and the associated risks, which are part of the Integrated Reporting.

The general objective of this study is to analyze, in a comparative way, the risks and opportunities identified in the Integrated Reporting corresponding to 2019 of the only three Argentine banks that issue those reports named “Integrated Reporting”.

The reports respond to the requirements of the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) Framework through different methodology implementation in order to identify the specific sources of risks and opportunities. The results showed an average degree of coincidence in the risks identified by the companies for the activity under analysis.

The analysis shows that the reports differ in terms of depth, scope and accuracy. In all cases it is only mentioned that they take specific procedures to mitigate and manage the risks found, although they are not specifically mentioned. It would be extremely important that companies could show the aforementioned proceedings in order to link them with the associated strategic objectives, strategies, policies, objectives and Key Performance Indicators.

It arises from this work that, in an area such as banking, with a highly regulated activity,  homogeneous enough in terms of operations, exposed to risks and similar contingencies, there is a significant divergence with respect to the content of Integrated Reporting analyzed that makes it difficult for users to compare thus it  limits their use.