Key audience

The IASB Management Commentary paper notes that in most jurisdictions, the defined target audience for narrative reporting is confined to investors, or in some cases - as in the UK - to even narrower groups such as current shareholders. However, this is an area of debate:

• Germany, for instance, refers broadly to the audience as the 'user'.
• In the UK, where the audience is defined explicitly by regulation, there has been widespread debate about which users should be the focus of narrative reporting, with many participants taking the view that it should meet the needs of all stakeholders.

The paper takes a balanced position on this debate, concluding that investors should be the primary audience for narrative reporting, but that this should not mean it represents a replacement for other forms of reporting aimed at a broader group of stakeholders, such as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reports.