Assurance over Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Assurance over Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
There is a widening gap between investor needs and the scope of information being assured by auditors.
Investors have long recognized the importance of financial and non-financial KPIs in assessing business value, but assurance has remained focused on the financial statements. The result is that investment decisions are being based on unassured data that has not been through the rigor of traditional financial reporting processes. The traditional financial reporting model is no longer all that investors need. The world has changed and assurance needs to respond.
Value drivers for business success
Your success is driven by both financial and non-financial performance. You use key performance indicators (KPIs) to help manage your business and to report on important trends and industry-based comparators. Which begs the question: How accurate are the KPIs that your organization and your stakeholders, including key customers, business partners and, importantly, investors rely on?
Helping you deliver value through assurance
Publishing KPIs is an important step in helping your stakeholders make more informed decisions. Providing independent assurance over those KPIs in turn leads to higher confidence all around. KPMG’s network of member firms have professionals with extensive experience providing assurance over a wide range of topics to support business objectives.
Bringing rigor and independence
Auditors are uniquely positioned to offer these value-added services. We apply consistent methodologies and professional standards with the same rigor that is brought to the financial statement audit. In addition, auditors bring an independent and objective view to your business’ value-drivers, qualities that make providing assurance over KPIs a natural extension of our audit expertise. Our professionals work across a variety of industries and technical subject matter areas, which equips us to deliver assurance on a broad spectrum of topics and offer practical insights based on our experience.
In other words, KPMG can provide assurance over all aspects of KPIs - the critical information that is used to manage, govern, transact with and invest in your organization.
KPMG member firms can provide:
- In-depth testing of the calculation and presentation of each KPI in comparison to the related frameworks and accepted methodologies
- A Board-level or public assurance report, covering all or selected KPIs being published
- Assurance over the systems, processes and controls that produce the data underlying the KPIs
- Benchmarking of company disclosures against global leading practices including the integration of traditional and non-traditional reporting.