Share This:

Earlier this month, Atticus’s James Quaile led a panel discussion on all things corporate reporting with Rebecca Waite, Deputy Company Secretary at Deliveroo, and Justin Thornton, Director of Internal Audit and Risk Management at Aston Martin, at The Chartered Governance Institute UK & Ireland.

Read on to discover the lessons learned by the teams at Aston Martin and Deliveroo from last year’s reporting cycle, as well as their perspectives on changing reporting requirements, and how technology can support corporate reporting.

Stakeholder management and agreeing on key messages

For Rebecca at Deliveroo, strategic timing of communications is key when it comes to stakeholder management and ultimately a smooth reporting process. Engaging with the Board too early can raise concerns about the readiness of the draft, whereas engaging too late raises questions about whether there is enough time to provide feedback. To combat this, Deliveroo uses Atticus to share two versions of the report, one for the professionals holding the pen; and the other for the executive team. 

Timing is also paramount when it comes to internal risk and audit for Justin at Aston Martin. Agreeing on key messages early on in the reporting cycle ensures that the rest of the drafting process goes smoothly. While contributors to the Annual Report are eager to share positive sentiments with the public, forward-looking targets should only be published if progress can be properly measured, and therefore evidence-backed.

New regulations bring new challenges

Rebecca flagged that new regulatory requirements, such as Provision 29 of the UK Corporate Governance Code, often lead to more content being added to the Annual Report. The key challenge for stakeholders is to meet all the regulatory requirements while still providing a concise, consistent and engaging message.

Another area of risk for companies is disclosing the quantifiable impact on climate and nature-related activities. At Aston Martin, Justin and the team scrutinise the data, ensuring it’s robust and accurately supports forward-looking statements. Relying on this process, the Disclosure Committee achieves a high level of confidence in the verification process.

How can technology support? 

Speaking to market themes, Rebecca notes that leveraging technology is critical in an environment where governance teams are often reducing in size while regulations continue to expand. Deliveroo’s use of Atticus has helped to transform their verification process and create efficiencies, putting the onus to verify data on relevant stakeholders and authors instead of a central team. 

Justin noted that Aston Martin has transformed its fact-checking process by adopting Atticus. The company used to suffer from a painfully manual process for corporate reporting, that involved using spreadsheets which couldn’t keep pace with version control. Atticus provided significant time (and therefore cost) savings, not just in the core work of verification, but also by sharing Atticus verification reports with their external auditors. The auditors could then rely on the process, giving them sufficient assurance over the robustness of their reporting.

From the Aston Martin customer story:

“We shared reports with our external auditors which saved huge amounts of time from having to respond to their questions on verification. Our external auditors were able to rely on our process and the automated reporting gave them sufficient assurance over the robustness of our process.”

headshot of Justin Thornton headshot of Justin Thornton
Justin Thornton
Director of Internal Risk & Audit at Aston Martin

To learn more about the Atticus platform, please get in touch via [email protected].