Sustainability Assurance: Comparing Drivers of Practice in Integrated Reporting Assurance and the Newly-Emerging Field of TCFD Assurance

In recent decades, the rapid growth of multinational corporations in size, power and global spread has been coupled with increasing public awareness of business' externalities upon the environment and society, culminating in growing demand for extended corporate accountability.

This has been exemplified by the substantial growth of sustainability reporting (SR), whereby firms disclose their economic, social and environmental impacts. Two of the more significant recent developments in this field are Integrated Reporting (IR) and TCFD (The Task-force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures) Reporting.
IR is a rapidly growing practice that seeks to integrate financial and non-financial information in corporations' annual reports, aiming to provide a holistic account of a company's overall performance by connecting the key themes of strategy, purpose and value creation.