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With over thirty years of experience in audit, the new developments in ESG are nothing new to Jan van der Hilst, senior advisor at Reanda Netherlands. In fact, the upcoming sustainability reporting directive is only something to look forward to. “I’m excited about the upcoming changes. Not just because we can finally start working on consistent ESG reporting, but also because our profession will be further enriched by being able to contribute to social objectives.”
An important new role for auditors in sustainability
“ESG sounds like it’s something new, but it’s not. I think companies started reporting on it around thirty years ago when they – and the public – became more aware of their carbon emissions. It wasn’t called ESG at the time. There were no regulations in place yet and reporting wasn’t mandatory. Some ten to fifteen years later the first legislation came into place to publish non-financial information on matters like emissions. The information wasn’t as adequate, but companies were trying their best without guidelines and it was all voluntary.
Now, starting in 2025, reporting on sustainability becomes compulsory. And I feel that after all these years, we are finally making a start, together, to really measure the information. Key performance indicators are more consistent and throughout Europe companies will have to report on the same issues. I’m very happy for our profession that we get such an important role in sustainability reporting. We are trusted to do that. It proves once again that auditors are the trusted advisors for society.”
“ESG is big. Bigger than people think. But it’s also more interesting and positive than people think.”
The rapid changing of the audit profession
“ESG is big. Bigger than people think. But ESG is also more interesting and more positive than people think. And I’d like them to realise that. Our profession is getting far more interesting and auditors are becoming more socially relevant. Our audit profession is going to change rapidly. I can imagine that most people see us as financial auditors; we audit the financial statements, we’re financially oriented. I think it’s very interesting that this is going to change significantly, because we are not just auditing the financial statements anymore. A substantial part of our role would be auditing socially relevant information. We are getting more responsible for the whole part; finance, HR, measuring social behaviour. It’s going to be far broader than what we did in the past. We’re no longer just auditing matters on finance, but on public matters as well: their labour conditions, their world, the products they consume. I see our profession getting more and more relevant.
Enabling the change
“As auditors, we are not the ones who are implementing the legislation or the changes within a company. We are enabling change. We are the ones who talk to the board of directors, discussing these matters, making sure they are ready for these changes and are doing well enough. And we check to see if what they are reporting is accurate. We hold them accountable. We hold up the mirror for management to see if they’re doing well. Sometimes management is very ambitious, so we have to rein them in a little, narrow it down to something they can manage. There has to be someone to say, ‘well, getting to that point in two years isn’t very realistic. Take it one step at the time.”
Ready to start CSRD
“At Reanda we are in the stage of making companies aware that the legislation will start in 2025 so they have to report in 2026. As auditors, we have to make them aware, we have to advise them where we can, and we have to do the audit. But besides preparing our clients we also have to prepare ourselves. So we follow courses, we look at the financial statements of big companies, we learn how we can advise our clients and how we can audit them. Last year we started with the awareness phase, now we are developing ourselves and moving to an advisory phase, and then in 2025 we move to the audit phase. At the moment I think that Reanda is ready to do the audits.”
“I think Reanda is ready to do the audits.”
For further information about the ESG services of Reanda Netherlands, please visit https://reanda-netherlands.com/
