The Taiwan Stock Exchange and the Accounting Research and the Development Foundation (ARDF) XBRL Committee jointly held the “Conference for Improving the Quality of CSR Reporting in 2017” at 2PM on April 11 at Taipei 101. The conference focused on the introduction to the GRI standards, the incorporation of CSR reports and XBRL, and how to effectively present the environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues in the CSR report. Around 70 people, including representatives of accounting firms and corporations, attended the conference.
The President of TWSE, Mr. Chi-hsien Lee, said in the opening speech that as the concept of sustainable development and the globalization of trade activities progress in international society, the topic of corporate social responsibility has come to a prominent position. It is worth considering how we can properly disclose a company’s major non-financial performance in the areas of environment, society, economic development, and governance, which was also the purpose of this Seminar. Chairman of ARDF, Ms. Yi-hsin Wang, also welcomed the participants to learn about and discuss the possible application of XBRL in the sustainability report. Section chief of SFB, Ms. Jing-ping Kao, thanked the organizers for coordinating this meeting, where everyone could look into the latest development status of CSR reports and how to effectively express ESG information in the XBRL language, and improve the quality of disclosure.
The Conference invited, in particular, experts from Beijing and Hong Kong to give keynote speeches. In the first keynote panel, “Trend and value of the CSR report development”, Manager of GRI Great China office, Ms. Yuan Yuan shared the latest guidelines for GRI and led the discussions together with the senior executive vice president of TWSE, Mr. Lih-chung Chien (Chief Commissioner of XBRL Committee), about the rules and structures of the preparation of the report. In the second keynote panel, sustainable development director of CLP Power Hong Kong Limited, Dr. Ji-ying Wu, shared the strategic considerations when preparing the report and led the discussion together with the deputy senior vice president of TWSE, Mr. Shi-hou Zhou (CEO of XBRL Committee) on the preliminary preparation, execution flows of the report preparation, and the plan for introducing XBRL in detail.  XBRL is expected to increase the transparency of information, enhance the efficiency of external audit services, such as accountant assurance, and enable the investors to analyze and compare data in a convenient way. The CLP Power participated in the pilot program of preparing the sustainability report in XBRL format, becoming the example for other public companies and reference for the competent authority.
Lastly, the conference highlighted a comprehensive panel held by senior vice president of TWSE, Mr. Tsun Cheng, seeking insights with respect to the analysis practice of materiality, strategy of presenting ESG performance indicators, and successful examples.  Speakers included the chief secretary of the Center for Taiwan Corporate Sustainability, Mr. Yu-ming Lee, vice secretary of the Business Council for Sustainable Development, Mr. Dong-li Mo, Deloitte accountant Mr. Shi-tsong Wu, EY accountant Mr. Yu-tse Tseng, PwC accountant Ms. Yi-hua Lee and KPMG accountant Mr. Wei-ming Shi. In the meeting, extensive discussions surrounded the trend of disclosures in CSR reports, whether the quality of disclosures may be substantially improved by transitioning from GRI G4 to GRI standards. Some important points worth about promoting the preparation among the corporate are the analysis approach of materiality in entities, integral concept, how CSR can facilitate companies in responding to risk and adjusting resource allocation, how ESG performance indicators deliver the message of a company’s risk awareness to its stakeholders, and management achievements.
Furthermore, the conference mentioned a recent report, with reference to a research institute, indicating that food safety is not one of the top 10 topics among the food industry in this country. Vice secretary Mr. Dong-li Mo suggested that this situation may have resulted from the discrepancy in the understanding of methodology. First, GRI reporting guidelines do not require companies to disclose the ranking of most significant topics. Such ranking might involve subjective judgment. In addition, according to the research report released by the Business Council for Sustainable Development in 2016, if we ranked the frequency of disclosure with respect to material topics in the food industry, the top one is customer’s health and safety, the second one is procurement practice, and the third one is product and service labeling. All three topics are related to the issue of food safety. Based on such standards, the food industry has included food safety as a material topics subject to disclose in the report. Among the others, the seven indicators requiring enhanced disclosure from the food industry as expressly specified in the Rules for CSR Report surrounds the issue of food safety. Therefore, it is so believed that no food industry participant has or will list the issue of food safety as an immaterial disclosure.
It is a growing trend in socially responsible investing. Companies seize a business opportunity from the phases of economic, environmental and social development, and show investors their capability of creating long-term value. Undoubtedly, the preparation of CSR reports and the communications forwarded therein are critically approached. This conference aimed to facilitate companies to learn about how to increase the quality of disclosure in their CSR reports through keynote presentations and sharing of experience, as well as to connect with the worldwide trend. All members are encouraged to continuously keep themselves aware of these topics and reach out to the organizers or the experts for further discussions. Visit http://cgc.twse.com.tw/ for conference materials.