Self-employed pension fund

At a time of significant volatility in the financial markets, and of the uncertainty and concern of savers, the completeness and transparency of financial reporting become an element of primary importance for the issuers and the authorities in charge of the regulation and markets’stability.

The financial information is currently the object of an assurance activity(statutory auditor and manager in charge of preparing accounting documents, board of auditors, supervisory board, other control bodies), aimed at guaranteeing its reliability and truthfulness for third parties, as much as an analysis activity(investors, financial analysts and rating companies), aimed at allowing a conscious investment by the saver, retail or institutional.

However, a more in-depth analysis reveals the need to bridge what appears to be a lack of greater information or the need for qualitative improvement of disclosure in the relationship between issuer and saver.

And indeed, although assurance activities are aimed at guaranteeing third parties respect in the application of accounting standards, in preparing the reference economic, financial and equity situation, it is impossible not to consider how (and could not be otherwise) the principles Accountants often offer the editor of the financial statements a range of options available, given the need to adapt the specific company situation to a principle by definition of a general nature.

It follows that, in assuring the overall adherence of the document in analysis to the reference accounting principles, the assurance activity often fails to distinguish and highlight the range of options available and that mainly derive both from a different propensity to risk considered acceptable by the different editors of the documents concerning financial reporting, both from the analysis activities oriented to a prospective view of the corporate business (think of the increasingly frequent phenomenon of significant variation between market capitalization and reference accounting net equity).

It follows that the instruments currently available to the investor in terms of financial reporting do not always allow them to accurately estimate the risk profile implicit in the issuer’s business, and in particular in the choices made within the range of options made available from the reference accounting standards.

But the full awareness of the risk assumed in the investment (having agreed that the same can take variable declinations in the light of the choices made regarding the correct application of the reference accounting principles) remains an essential element for the estimate of the return deemed optimal by the investor.In the current context it seems appropriate to integrate the information available to the investor with further information elements which, starting from a careful analysis of the economic, equity and financial situation of reference, allow the perception of the risk profile deemed acceptable by the editor of the documents concerning financial reporting, among the possible choices in application of the reference accounting principles.

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