Integrated reporting helps bankmecu look forward

12 November 2013

bankmecu Managing Director Damien Walsh says that bankmecu’s corporate reporting and annual general meetings have become more integrated and forward looking as a result of the bank’s use of the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC)’s draft guidelines to produce integrated annual reports.

bankmecu, Australia’s first 100% customer owned bank, is one of three Australian companies to participate in the IIRC’s pilot programme to road-test the draft guidelines.

“Our goal was to develop very concise reporting, and we drew not only on our sustainability reporting but also our statutory accounts,” Walsh said. “We talked about our financial performance and sustainability as well as our governance structure and social and environmental impacts, bringing all those elements together in a succinct corporate report. We saw value in that, and one that wasn’t just full of pretty pictures. It’s there to tell a story.”

“We’re starting to shift our AGM focus away from just reporting on statutory financials, which are backward looking, to talk about the elements of our integrated reporting which help us to be more forward looking and then talking about the shared value that’s created in our business at our AGMs,” he said. “We started that last year and I think that’s a great evolution for this business, particularly as a cooperative, you need to demonstrate how you create value for the customer.”

“The value to us then, is, if we quantify the social impact, it is about then articulating the business case so that it’s mainstream,” he said. “If we didn’t quantify it, we would still know we’re doing good anyway, but for us, the value is really about articulating the business case so that others can see that corporate social responsibility isn’t a nice thing to have, it’s not about a charity or giving money away, it’s actually about doing good in the communities and making profit at the same time.”

Read the full story at the Sustainability Report, bankmecu: Integrated reporting develops integrated thinking, Nov 8