At the end of January, Corpul Experților Contabili și Contabililor Autorizați din România, has become a member of the SASB Alliance which operates within the SASB Foundation, a non-profit organization created in 2011 to oversee the strategy, finances, and operations of the Sustainability Accounting Standard Board. As part of its continuous efforts to sustain the necessity to establish industry-specific disclosure standards across environmental, social, and governance topics, CECCAR is the first European professional organization to join the Alliance.
In the current context of transition from the traditional accounting services to integrated reporting, which offers both financial and non-financial information, as well as taking into consideration the extent of the increasingly concern about sustainability and corporate social responsibility, being a member of the Alliance brings real benefices for the Romanian professional accountants by means of developing good practices for the integration of these information into the existing processes.
Sustainability accounting also known as social accounting or non-financial reporting is considered a subcategory of financial that focuses on the disclosure of non-financial information about a firm’s performance to external stakeholders, such as capital holders, creditors, and other authorities. Sustainability accounting represents the activities that have a direct impact on society, environment, and economic performance of an organization.
The mission of the Sustainability Accounting Standard Board is to establish industry-specific disclosure standards across environmental, social, and governance topics that facilitate communication between companies and investors about financially material, decision-useful information. Such information should be relevant, reliable and comparable across companies on a global basis.
In 2017, FASB launched the SASB Alliance which is a new membership program that supports the need for more decision-useful, cost-effective sustainability disclosure. The SASB Alliance has two groups, one for organizations (asset managers, asset owners, issuers, and service providers) and one for individuals (finance, investment, sustainability, assurance, and law professionals).
Organizations that join the SASB Alliance have a unique opportunity to learn from SASB and one another about changing expectations for material sustainability information. Through exclusive convenings and member dialogues, SASB supports organizational members as they aim to build capacity among their staff, identify best practices and explore the use of material sustainability information. By joining the SASB Alliance, organizations support standardized sustainability disclosures that meet the needs of investors while reducing the burden on issuers.
The SASB Alliance is a program of the SASB Foundation, which provides the market with education and resources that advance the use of SASB standards and the field of sustainability accounting.
