Global perspectives

Welington Rocha

IIRC Council Member

Chair of the FIPECAFI – Foundation and Research Institute of Accounting, Actuarial, and Finance

Senior Professor, Accountancy and Actuarial Science Department, University of São Paulo

Eduardo Flores

Professor and Researcher, Accountancy and Actuarial Science Department, University of São Paulo


The first ten years of the IIRC have demonstrated how important integrated reporting is to promote reflections about corporate reports and pursue an alignment between financial and non-financial information. Furthermore, it allows firms to understand how their business practices are developed and, based on integrated thinking, improved, or even abandoned as they become outdated procedures.

In Brazil, integrated reporting is receiving more and more attention from organizations that seek to demonstrate not only the conduct of compliance with formal laws and rules but also that they can be long-lived in their business model, through practices that respect the different capitals used by these organizations.

The current moment shows how relevant the IIRC’s initiatives are so that future generations can have access to a more sustainable world, driven by long-term thinking about human activities. Undoubtedly, these are not only initiatives that aim to increase the quality of corporate reports, but the development of sustainable capitalism, not implying the abandonment or reduction of economic activity, but in rethinking how we do what we do so that as many people as possible can have access to the well-being needed to develop their full capabilities and potentials.

From an academic point of view, several studies have been produced indicating the positive association between integrated reporting and economic-financial indicators, which would indicate that investors have analyzed and incorporated such information in their analytical processes.

It is also interesting to note the role of market agents in the search for integrated information. During 2020, more specifically due to the discussions that resulted from the restrictions arising from COVID-19, we saw the topic of environmental, social and governance (ESG) gain exponential prominence globally. It is not possible to demonstrate what organizations have been doing about this agenda, if not through a set of integrated and coherent information. In other words, the relevance of integrated reporting is one of the pillars for developing the topic of ESG.

In this way, the IIRC plays a very important role in the environment, social, and governance discussion, especially for being a democratic and plural organization, able to hear several participants from the corporate world and the civil society.