Sustainability Assurance in the Financial Services Industry

What is it about?

ustainability reporting and assurance have considerably increased in the last decades. Among different sectors, `sensitive sectors' attracted the attention of many academics. However, most of research works were focused only on `environmentally-sensitive sectors'. Therefore, after the loss of trust caused by the lack of transparency due to the crisis, `socially-sensitive sectors' asnancial services sector needs to strengthen users' condence in the credibility of their reported activities. The aim of this paper is to assess assurance practices worldwide in one of the main `socially-sensitive sectors': the nancial services sector. We study what factors are associated with adoption of assurance and choice of assurance provider, and whether assurance statements differ across providers. Our results reveal that, compared to the global context, companies operating in thenancial services sector are more likely to adopt assurance and to choose accountants as assurance providers. Our ndings show that adoption of assurance depends on company size. We also found that companies using the nancial services sector supplement are more prone to adopt assurance. Our results also evidence that choice of assurance provider depends on the country and listing status Finally, our research shows a great variability in assurance statements across providers.

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