Sustainability Reporting in the Banking Industry: Examining the Extent of Assurance

We examine the sustainability reporting assurance choices made by 58 banks from 13 countries. We find the most common assurance choice is partial assurance, whereby only part of the sustainability report is assured. We also undertake detailed content analysis of the extent of partial assurance at three different levels: total sustainability metrics assured, total subject matter metrics assured, and total pages assured. Across all three extent measures, we find low levels of assurance. Our findings add to the limited academic literature on partial assurance. The low assurance levels we report also call into question the credibility to be accorded the full set of information disclosed in banks’ sustainability reports.