Conclusions on improved stakeholder involvement have been drawn by the audit regulator, the National Financial Reporting Authority (NFRA).

When the NFRA Consultation Paper (CP) was released in June 2021, it sought input from stakeholders on the actions it planned to take in response to the recommendations of its Technical Advisory Committee (TAC).

The time for making comments had come to a close on July 30th, 2021. NFRA has received 17 letters of opinion from various stakeholders, including major industry organisations, large accounting firms, and academic institutions. There has been widespread agreement amongst stakeholders to encourage proactive Stakeholder involvement, as proposed by NFRA NFRA’s initiative to set up the TAC was particularly well received by several responders.

There were a total of 19 questions from the March 2021 TAC report that NFRA wanted answers to. Stakeholders have provided several useful recommendations and contributions on all of the issues on which NFRA had requested feedback.

Among the TAC’s duties include “offering suggestions from the viewpoints of users, preparers, and auditors of financial accounts.” The TAC evaluated the existing engagement of NFRA with its Stakeholders as part of its mandate and in conjunction with the executive body, and published a detailed report in March 2021. TAC’s proposals and the early opinions of NFRA on them were both valuable to NFRA, therefore it sought the views of the larger Stakeholder Group and the general public on them.

It was concluded by NFRA that the organisation needed to be positioned as a regulator for the whole spectrum of financial reporting, including all procedures and participants.