Accounting watchdog warns firms against ‘boilerplate’ Covid notes

The Irish accounting regulator has called on companies to “redouble their efforts” to provide proper information on the impact of Covid-19 in their accounts, after finding varying levels of disclosure across a sample of financial reports published in recent months.

The Irish Auditing & Accounting Supervisory Authority (Iaasa) said in a document published this week that it observed “diversity of quality of reporting” across 20 interim reports and one full-year report published by publicly quoted companies, mainly for periods up to the end of June.

“Higher quality disclosures were those that clearly explained to users, in [company] specific terms, the critical judgements and sources of estimation uncertainty and any sensitivities associated with those judgements,” Iaasa said.

“Lower quality disclosures were characterised by boilerplate references to the pandemic and instances where entities remain silent or vague in explaining some of the key judgements and an absence of issuer specific information.”