Reporting
The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) has published its latest review of structured digital reporting by UK-listed companies. Structured Digital Reporting: Insights 2025/26 identifies areas where relatively simple improvements would significantly enhance the quality, consistency and usability of digital financial reporting. Although structured digital reporting is now embedded across the UK, the review identifies recurring issues that continue to limit the usefulness of structured data for investors, regulators and other users.
Authorised corporate service providers
Practitioners wishing to file annual returns or other returns with Companies House as an agent for their client must register as an authorised corporate service provider (ACSP). ACCA has issued guidance on the process, although at the time of writing no resolution has yet been found for applicants without a business address in the UK. ACCA continues to lobby for a change in the regulations to allow members resident in Ireland to register as ACSPs. In the meantime, the directors of a UK company can file their own returns, under the guidance of an accountant, without the use of an ACSP.
AML controls
The Financial Conduct Authority has published a multifirm review of processes and controls for standard, enhanced and ongoing due diligence. It includes examples of both good and poor anti-money laundering (AML) practices.
Sustainability
The International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) is planning to release guidance on framing information about nature-related risks and opportunities within sustainability reports. The guidance, which should be proposed this October, will mesh with existing ISSB standards IFRS S1 (general requirements for sustainability reporting) and IFRS S2 (climate-related disclosures).
The Transition Implementation Group on IFRS S1 and IFRS S2 has released guidance on implementing IFRS S1 and S2, drawing on the texts themselves rather than external advice. The guidance answers questions about compliance by highlighting relevant portions of the standards.
The IFRS Foundation has revised the Due Process Handbook, laying down how the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and the ISSB should develop and maintain their standards. The revised handbook adds procedures for changing Sustainability Accounting Standards Board standards, which are followed under ISSB reporting.
The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) have updated mapping between the CDP’s 2026 corporate questionnaire and GRI 102, Climate Change, and GRI 103, Energy Standards. They have identified how these disclosures mesh, helping companies to reduce duplication by utilising the same underlying data while boosting efficiency and comparability.
Auditing
The FRC has published updates to ISA (UK) 240, The Auditor’s Responsibilities Relating to Fraud in an Audit of Financial Statements, and ISA (UK) 570, Going Concern.
Meanwhile the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB) has released draft revisions to its international standard on review engagements (ISRE 2410), which covers assessments of interim financial information by independent auditors of an entity’s annual financial statements. Proposed changes include a clearer definition of interim review engagements and enhanced requirements over going concern, fraud and breaches of laws and regulations.
And the International Forum of Independent Audit Regulators (IFIAR) has called on audit practices to use IAASB’s ISQM 1, International Standard on Quality Management, to ensure effective monitoring and oversight of the use of technology in audits. The call comes in IFIAR’s 2026 report, Use of technology in audits: Innovation and audit quality, which assesses how new technology is reshaping audits worldwide and introducing new risks.
Public sector
The National Audit Office has set out eight recommendations to help strengthen the Department for Education’s oversight of local bodies across the schools, early years and children’s social care sectors. The recommendations include establishing a national vision, adopting a whole-system approach, and finding more opportunities to identify and share good practice.
The International Public Sector Accounting Standards Board (IPSASB) has proposed a wide range of detailed changes to IPSAS, including to financial instruments, foreign exchange and consolidated financial statements. It has also proposed comprehensive changes to IPSAS 40 on the acquisition or amalgamation of public sector operations, focusing on the definition of an operation and recognition of acquired liabilities and contingent liabilities.
Meanwhile the board has proposed a practice statement on making materiality judgments under IPSAS. The guidance suggests a four-step approach to identifying, assessing, organising and reviewing potentially material information.
And finally, IPSASB is consulting on how financial information can be better presented in public sector financial statements. The feedback will help the board draft a new IPSAS standard to replace IPSAS 1, Presentation of Financial Statements, issued in 2000.
Ethics
The International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants (IESBA) has released a guide to its approach to proportionality in the ethics and independence standards in the IESBA code. Proportionality of the IESBA Code aims to support professional accountants, especially in small and medium practices, in understanding how the code maintains a universal high ethical bar while employing proportionality mechanisms embedded in its design.
Financial markets
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) have jointly proposed reducing private fund reporting requirements. They will amend Form PF, a confidential reporting template for certain SEC-registered investment advisers to private funds, including those registered with the CFTC as commodity pool operators or commodity trading advisers.
The Bank for International Settlements’ Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures and the International Organization of Securities Commissions are consulting on updated guidance for public disclosures when implementing initial margin proposals. The changes would boost information about the resilience of central counterparties and reform public quantitative disclosure standards on central counterparties, covering simulation tools, the measurement of initial margin responsiveness, margin model governance frameworks, margin model overrides and more.
