Informed consent
This document provides information about an academic research projects which aims to identify similarities and differences in the information preferences and needs of preparers and users of financial accounting information.
Information for Better Markets
Advancing thinking and debate
What information should companies disclose? How should they measure their profits and their capital? How should their reporting be regulated? As the laws, regulations and standards governing financial reporting become ever more complex, the ICAEW Financial Reporting Faculty aims to helps members keep up to date and to understand the implications of new requirements. The faculty also seeks to inform and influence regulators and standard-setters on financial reporting questions. The faculty’s work on these public policy issues is informed by its Information for Better Markets thought leadership programme.
What it's all about
Our Information for Better Markets work subjects key issues in financial reporting to careful and impartial analysis. Better understanding of these issues will help achieve what the preparers and users of financial reporting need – practical solutions to complex problems. In pursuit of this objective, the Information for Better Markets initiative tackles three broad themes in financial reporting:
- disclosure;
- measurement; and
- regulation.
We write and publish reports and commission research by leading academics from around the world.
We host two annual events, the P. D. Leake Lecture and the Information for Better Markets Conference at which we present the outcome of this research and any reports written by the ICAEW. Papers based on these events are published in the annual International Accounting Policy Forum special issue of Accounting and Business Research, a leading academic journal. Both the research and the events at which it is presented are financed by ICAEW’s charitable trusts.
What we've done
All our reports in the Information for Better Markets series and webcasts of the most recent lectures and conferences are available online:
What's new?
IFBM conference 2022: The Covid-19 pandemic: lessons for the theory and practice of accounting
Book your free place for this year’s event being run as daily online lectures from 12-15 December 2022.
IFBM conference 2021: Accounting standards: the ‘too difficult’ box
View videos and academic papers from the 2021 Information for Better Markets conference on ‘Accounting standards: the ‘too difficult’ box’.
Accounting in the Anthropocene
The 2021 PD Leake lecture given by Professor Jan Bebbington, Lancaster University, with a response from Richard Spencer, Director of Sustainability, ICAEW.
Other webcasts
IFBM conference 2020: The financial reporting system: seeing the bigger picture
View videos and academic papers from the 2020 Information for Better Markets conference on 'The financial reporting system: seeing the bigger picture'.
The art of conversation
The 2020 PD Leake lecture, given by Dr Miguel Minutti-Meza, Miami Herbert Business School, with a response from Allister Wilson, Assurance Partner at EY.
Non financial reporting ensuring a sustainable global recovery
Practical suggestions on how the EU and international actors can support the collaborative development of non-financial reporting standards.
IFBM conference 2019: The real effects of financial reporting
View videos and academic papers from the 2019 Information for Better Markets conference on ‘The real effects of financial reporting’.
Smaller listed and AIM quoted companies
This guide, written in association with the Financial Reporting Council, offers advice for audit committees and boards of smaller quoted companies on evaluating the adequacy of a company’s financial reporting function and process.