Business Audit in ESG format: Up-Growth of the Corporate Reporting Verification Methodology

Abstract

The paper continues the series of authors’ publications on the problem of developing the concept of business audit in sustainable development and ESG transformation. The object of the study is the modern international and Russian practice of verifying public ESG reporting by leading companies. The study’s task is to develop a methodology to confirm its reliability as the area for developing business audit in these conditions. As a result of the study, the authors have identified a trend for the auditors of the world’s leading countries to express an opinion on the reliability of ESG reporting with the provision of reasonable assurance to interested users, in contrast to Russian practice, in which thereare currently no such precedents. There have been determined directions for improving the procedure for confirming the reliability of public (including non-financial) reporting and delimited by the horizon of their practical implementation. The authors substantiated the necessity of introducing a requirement for a mandatory audit of non-financial information in corporate reporting. Also, they gave a comparative description of the two tracks of the practical implementation in the application of this requirement: the introduction of a mandatory rule for the predominant expression of reasonable assurance when auditors perform assignments to confirm the reliability of all types of non-financial reporting; extending the requirements of auditing standards, requiring auditors to express reasonable assurance on all corporate reporting. The authors have developed proposals to correct certain aspects of the existing methodology for the audit of financial statements in relation to the process of verification of non-financial information in corporate reporting. The results got will expand audit practice in the implementation’s context of the concept of sustainable development and implementing ESG principles. The study may interest national regulators, professional communities, as well as investors and financial market participants.