IFAC and A4S hosted their Climate Week NYC event Finance Leaders Plugging the Net-Zero Information Gap: Exploring the critical role of CFOs and finance teams in the climate transition two weeks ago. The event brought together finance and accounting leaders to better understand how they're enabling their organization’s decarbonization strategies and transition planning and what obstacles they’re facing.

A recording of the event and takeaways are now available. 

“The task to decarbonizeeconomies is no mean feat,” said Kevin Dancey, IFAC CEO. “The quality of sustainability-related data and reporting processes must be improved to meet the demands of investors, regulators, and policy makers and the urgency of the climate crisis itself. Leveraging the skills of professional accountants to identify risks and opportunities and enhance climate-related information is an essential starting point.” 

Watch the recording and read the takeaways now. 

Together with ICAEW, The International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) today released a new installment in its Anti-Money Laundering: The Basics educational series: Installment Seven: Virtual Assets.  

The publication is part of a series helping accountants enhance their understanding of how money laundering works, the risks they face, and what they can do to mitigate these risks and make a positive contribution to the public interest. Installment seven looks at the broad new class of assets that have emerged over the past decade known as virtual assets, including Bitcoin and NFTs (non-fungible tokens).

Anti-Money Laundering: The Basics is user-friendly, easily accessible, and will be a resource for Small and Medium Practices (SMPs) and accountants less familiar with AML, while also providing guidance for those looking for a quick refresher or reference. Future installments will examine trends in money laundering and tools to fight back illegal activities.

Anti-Money Laundering: The Basics is featured on both the IFAC (landing page) and ICAEW websites and available for download for free. To be globally relevant, the series uses the risk-based approach of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) – the global money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog -- as a starting point. 

For more information about IFAC, visit www.ifac.org.

For more information about ICAEW, visit https://www.icaew.com/.

As technology advances and the world becomes more complex, the professional accountant’s skills and competencies, underpinned by ethics and recognizing their public interest responsibility, are critical in navigating new challenges and opportunities and ensuring trust in the profession. To help professional accountants and stakeholders better understand these topics, the Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada (CPA Canada), the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland (ICAS), the International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants (IESBA), and the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) have released Technology is a double-edged sword with both opportunities and challenges for the accountancy profession, the second in a four-part thought leadership series examining the professional accountant’s role in a new technological era.

The publication examines the impact of rapid technological change and the importance of ethical leadership from the lens of the professional accountant. It also provides practical guidance to both professional accountants and professional accountancy organizations.

Technology is a double-edged sword with both opportunities and challenges for the accountancy profession follows Complexity and the professional accountant: Practical guidance for ethical decision-making, the first publication in the series, and builds off a collaborative exploratory paper and global roundtable event called Ethical Leadership in an Era of Complexity and Digital Change, which CPA Canada, ICAS and IFAC jointly hosted earlier in 2021. The third and fourth publications in the series will focus on identifying and mitigating bias and mis-/disinformation, and mindset and enabling skills.

The publication is available on the IFAC Knowledge Gateway and the IESBA’s webpage Technology: Ethics & Independence Considerations.

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About CPA Canada
Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada (CPA Canada) works collaboratively with the provincial, territorial and Bermudian CPA bodies, as it represents the Canadian accounting profession, both nationally and internationally. This collaboration allows the Canadian profession to champion best practices that benefit business and society, as well as prepare its members for an ever-evolving operating environment featuring unprecedented change. Representing more than 220,000 members, CPA Canada is one of the largest national accounting bodies worldwide. cpacanada.ca

About ICAS
The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland (ICAS) is the global professional body for Chartered Accountants. We educate, examine and lead, enabling excellence whilst always working for the wider public good. All 23,000 ICAS members have earned our world-class CA designation of Chartered Accountant, the qualification that’s shaped an international business community spanning industries and continents, full of local heroes and corporate leaders. And we continually foster the bonds between our members, so CAs at all stages of their careers can learn from shared experience and connect their ambitions to success. For further information please visit – icas.com.

About IESBA

The International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants (IESBA) is an independent global standard-setting board. The IESBA’s mission is to serve the public interest by setting ethics standards, including auditor independence requirements, which seek to raise the bar for ethical conduct and practice for all professional accountants through a robust, globally operable International Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants (including International Independence Standards) (the Code).

About IFAC

The International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) is the global organization for the accountancy profession dedicated to serving the public interest by strengthening the profession and contributing to the development of strong international economies. Comprised of 180 members and associates in more than 130 countries and jurisdictions, IFAC represents more than 3 million accountants in public practice, education, government service, industry and commerce.

Over four decades, IFAC has represented the global profession and supported the development, adoption, and implementation of international standards that underpin the contributions of today’s global accountancy profession. IFAC has maintained a long-term approach to building and strengthening a global accountancy profession that supports transparent, accountable, and sustainable organizations, financial markets, and economies.

Today, IFAC released a publication, “Sustainability Information for Small Businesses: The Opportunity for Practitioners,” exploring the diverse benefits of embracing sustainability information. 

The report examines the importance of readily available, relevant, and reliable sustainability information for achieving better-informed decisions, enhanced strategic and risk management, and more thorough and valuable reporting to external stakeholders. It also highlights a range of emerging services that practitioners can provide to their clients, including advisory services, reporting, agreed-upon procedures (AUP) engagements, and assurance services.

Small businesses make up more than 90 percent of businesses worldwide; they are critical to achieving sustainable outcomes for economies, the environment and society. They can find significant advantages from establishing (or enhancing) processes, systems and controls for identifying, measuring, and analyzing sustainability information. This can include improved efficiencies and performance, as well as differentiation from competitors. Small businesses are also likely to be subject to sustainability-related reporting information requests from a diverse range of stakeholders, including large companies, banks, and suppliers—if they are not already. 

This publication was developed with advice and guidance from the IFAC Small and Medium Practices (SMP) Advisory Group and builds on the Advisory Group’s work on practice transformation. 

Although focusing on sustainability information and related services may seem premature for some small businesses and practitioners, the field is growing quickly. To speak to different practitioners’ unique circumstances, the publication includes suggestions on building knowledge and competencies and taking initial steps. 

IFAC will explore these issues further in a webinar on December 15 titled “Sustainability Offers New Opportunities for SMPs” (with simultaneous translation into Spanish and French). The webinar will feature a panel discussion with practitioners who are providing services in this space.

About IFAC
IFAC is the global organization for the accountancy profession dedicated to serving the public interest by strengthening the profession and contributing to the development of strong international economies. IFAC is comprised of 180 members and associates in 135 countries and jurisdictions, representing more than 3 million accountants in public practice, education, government service, industry, and commerce.

This report examines the importance of readily available, relevant, and reliable sustainability information for achieving better-informed decisions, enhanced strategic and risk management, and more thorough and valuable reporting to external stakeholders. It also highlights a range of emerging services that practitioners can provide to their clients, including advisory services, reporting, agreed-upon procedures (AUP) engagements, and assurance services.

As the global voice of the accountancy profession, IFAC releases Points of View (POVs) on key policy issues impacting the accounting profession and the whole of society. These POVs are well-researched tools available for anyone to use in gaining an understanding of crucial topics affecting our world and potentially influencing policies that affect us all.

To make its POVs more accessible to its global constituency and their stakeholders, IFAC has published all seven of its POVs, originally only available in English, into four additional languages: Arabic, French, Russian, and Spanish.

"From improving public sector transparency with data-driven decisions to providing investors with high-quality and trustworthy sustainability information, these POVs cover a broad range of topics of critical importance to professional accountants worldwide,” said Kevin Dancey, IFAC CEO. “These translations will improve the ability of professional accountants to make an impact in their companies and jurisdictions.”

The topics covered in the POVs are:

Enhancing Corporate Reporting: Corporate reporting should capture all relevant information about organizations. However, investors and other stakeholders are demanding more, higher-quality information and insights about company performance, risks, opportunities, and long-term prospects, especially with respect to sustainability-related matters, than are available from the conventional financial reporting process.

Greater Transparency and Accountability in the Public Sector: This POV explores how governments can use the resources they have to have to make informed, data-driven decisions with strong governance and public financial management (PFM) and how the accountancy profession can work with the public sector to help deliver a more sustainable, inclusive, and prosperous future for all. 

Embracing a People-Centered Profession: The accountancy profession is first and foremost a profession made of people—individuals and teams working collaboratively and collectively. This POV explores the connection between the people in the accountancy profession, the core components of the profession (education, professional judgment, ethics, values) and the profession’s commitment to the public interest.

Maintaining Trust & Confidence During a Crisis: Maintaining trust and confidence during a crisis is the fastest path to recovery after a crisis. This POV explores the key roles that regulators, the global accounting profession and those charged with governance have to play in maintaining trust.

Achieving High-Quality Audits: High-quality audits of financial statements are essential to strong, sustainable organizations, financial markets and economies. All participants in the audit and assurance ecosystem must act to improve the audit process, and we outline how.

Climate Action: Climate change is an urgent, global, and systemic issue that can threaten the sustainability of organizations, markets, and economies. This POV outlines how to embrace climate action and be part of the solution.

Fighting Corruption and Money Laundering: The consequences of corruption are significant and widespread, from direct costs to individuals and society, to encouraging criminal behavior and undermining trust in institutions. Grounded in a strong ethical code, professional accountants across the globe play a critical role in the fight against corruption.

Access the POVs here in each language.

About IFAC

IFAC is the global organization for the accountancy profession dedicated to serving the public interest by strengthening the profession and contributing to the development of strong international economies. IFAC is comprised of 180 members and associates in 135 countries and jurisdictions, representing more than 3 million accountants in public practice, education, government service, industry, and commerce.

As the drive toward a global system for sustainability-related reporting continues, investors, regulators and policymakers are turning their attention to the important role of assurance in ensuring high-quality reporting. With the growing importance of—and reliance on—sustainability information, low-quality assurance is an emerging investor protection and financial stability risk.