This study analyses the impact of Spanish financial institutions’ risk profile on their contribution to the 2030 Agenda. Financial institutions play a significant role in ensuring financial inclusion and sustainable economic growth and usually incorporate environmental and social considerations into their risk management systems. The results show that financial institutions with less capital risk, with lower management efficiency and with higher market risk usually make higher contributions to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), according to their sustainability reports. The novel aspect of the present study is that it identifies the risk profile of financial institutions that incorporate sustainability into their business operations and measure the impact generated in the environment and in society. The study findings have important implications for shareholders, investors and analysts, according to the view that sustainability reporting is a vehicle that financial institutions use to express their commitment to the 2030 Agenda and to higher quality corporate reporting.

En los últimos años se ha criticado la veracidad, claridad y relevancia de la información relacionada con la contribución de las organizaciones al Desarrollo Sostenible, situación ocasionada en parte por la utilización de una bateria de indicadores para abordar la dimensión económica, social y medioambiental. Es necesario el empleo de indicadores integrados que midan dos o las tres dimensiones de la sostenibilidad y aquellos que relacionen el desempeño de la organización con el estado del entorno.Para contribuir al desarrollo del reporting de sostenibilidad, seria necesario conocer la práctica actual que explique factores relacionados con el empleo de los indicadores integrados; por ello, el objetivo del trabajo es explorar si existen características que definan a las empresas que publican memorias que contienen indicadores integrados.El resultado más significativo es la agrupación de la mayoria de las memorias con un bajo nivel de calidad de la información con respecto al desarrollo de indicadores integrados. En general, los resultados muestran que los factores de clasificación clásicos utilizados por la literatura previa (tamaño, sector y nacionalidad) no son muy útiles a la hora de agrupar a las memorias analizadas, lo que lleva a plantear la posibilidad de explorar variables internas.

Purpose: This paper investigates how audit firms identified and communicated the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in the key audit matters (KAMs) sections of audit reports, distinguishing whether such disclosure is highlighting or downplaying the COVID risks. Design/methodology/approach: We analyze the KAM disclosures made for a sample of 34 Spanish IBEX-35 listed companies for the year 2020. Qualitative content analysis was conducted to derive a taxonomy of audit firms' attitudes on whether they highlighted or downplayed the importance of COVID-19 risk regarding company disclosures. To do so, the following categories were established: aligned COVID risk, generalist, conservative, aligned no COVID risk and potentially omissive. Findings: The study findings indicate that 26% of total KAMs referred to COVID-19, and were concentrated in certain higher-risk business sectors. The results of this analysis provide initial evidence that most audit firms emphasized pandemic issues consistent with company disclosures. However, there was some variability, suggesting there is a need for clearer reporting standards amid such crises. Research limitations/implications: The proposed alignment taxonomy conceptually enriches the literature on the assessment of financial transparency practices. Practical implications: This study has significant implications for policymakers (for example, in assessing how auditors have communicated COVID-19-related issues) and for the auditors concerned (to identify the strengths and weaknesses of their approach) Social implications: Among other implications, we highlight the crucial governance role played by risk disclosure in maintaining stakeholder legitimacy during periods of business and social turbulence. Originality/value: To our knowledge, this is the first research conducted to determine the behavior of auditors in this respect, and to classify their attitudes accordingly.