EFRAG highlights gaps in intangible reporting
Do today’s financial statements tell us everything we need to know about intangibles? According to a new report from the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG), the answer is no.
Based on a series of workshops held in partnership with the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), the findings point to gaps in the data for investors and analysts.
Data users are increasingly interested in emerging intangible assets, often tech driven, such as AI, data resources, algorithms, and digital platforms. Workshop participants repeatedly asked for more granularity in both narrative and numbers, better disaggregation of costs, clearer capitalisation policies and a stronger connection between what’s said in the management report and what’s shown on the balance sheet.
For digital intangibles, users underscored the importance of disclosures on data usage, AI capabilities, and the specific roles these intangibles play in business models, all vital for comparability and informed decision-making.
A consistent theme was that important information for users sometimes lives outside the financial statements. Think investor presentations, earnings calls, and the occasional deep dive into patent databases. Participants generally supported more disclosures within financial statements, supplemented by narrative reporting where forward-looking or specific context is required.
While there’s always a balance between reporting burden and information needs, if the data is already being published, in reports, slides, or elsewhere, it makes sense to make it structured, machine-readable and comparable. Standardising sector-agnostic and business-model-specific KPIs could unlock significant benefits for analysis, automation and comparability.
Explore the full report on EFRAG’s website.
