In an audit of a firm’s financial statements, the auditor assesses whether there is material uncertainty about the firm’s ability to continue as a going concern. If the existence of material uncertainty is confirmed, the auditor considers the adequacy of the firm’s disclosures regarding its going concern in the firm’s annual report. Most commonly, if the firm’s disclosures are adequate, the auditor issues a going-concern opinion in the auditor’s report. The auditor modifies his opinion on firm’s financial statements because of auditor’s going-concern doubt on the firm’s ability to continue as a going-concern rarely in specific circumstances. In the present paper we provide an auditor’s going-concern prediction model using various combinations of a firm’s economic predictors. A sample data of 14,761 firm-year observations from Slovenia during the period 2005–2013 has been used for the model. The results reveal that firms with a going-concern qualification have a worse financial structure (i.e., lower equity financing rates), worse liquidity, worse efficiency, and worse profitability in comparison to firms without this qualification. Using a logistic regression prediction model for a going concern qualification in auditor’s report, qualification can be predicted with sufficient accuracy on a sample data of Slovenian firms.

The preparation of sustainability reports, which a negligible number of organisations had been doing until recently, will soon be the new reality for many more organisations. This research aims to present changes during the COVID-19 pandemic in the ecosystem of sustainability reporting pronouncements, especially those used by organisations. In our research, we compare important information about two different periods and the content demands in reporting on sustainability. Changes in the ecosystem are fundamental and unique. Based on the analysis of events and documents, the current research shows the changes in the ecosystem and the future dynamics in the ecosystem, including the principle standard setters (i.e., International Sustainability Standards Board and European Financial Reporting Advisory Group, EFRAG). The research shows that although the changes occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, they did not significantly impact the ecosystem’s development or slow down or stop their development. The COVID-19 pandemic did not affect the speed or dynamics of changes. In the last few years, EFRAG and the European Union established their position and gained a significant influence in sustainability reporting, with EFRAG at the forefront. The European Sustainability Reporting Standards will be mandatory for organisations doing business in the European Union. At the same time, we do not expect that the IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards will be directly endorsed for use in the European Union. The paper presents a new perspective on examining sustainability via developing organisations’ reporting demands within the framework of the uncertain environment caused by COVID-19. In this context, our research also contributes to the literature. The study also has a potential practical impact on organisations and management since it illuminates a wide range of selected sustainability viewpoints and their reporting.

An auditor’s report qualifies a company’s financial statements if the management’s representation of the company’s financial affairs is not in accordance with nationally generally accepted accounting pronouncements. The present research studies the qualification of auditors’ reports in relation to the circumstances in the company’s economic situation that lead to the qualification. Qualifications have been analysed on a sample of 293 large Slovenian companies. The results reveal that companies with qualified auditors’ reports have high indebtedness, low liquidity, low efficiency and poor profitability in comparison with companies with unqualified auditors’ reports. From a statistical viewpoint, a logistic model can distinguish between companies that received a qualified auditor’s report and companies that received an unqualified auditor’s report on a sample of Slovenian large companies.

Financial innovation, green investments, or climate change are changing insurers’ business ecosystems, impacting their business behaviour and financial vulnerability. Supervisors and other stakeholders are interested in identifying the path toward deterioration in the insurance company’s financial health as early as possible. Suptech tools enable them to discover more and to intervene in a timely manner. We propose an artificial intelligence approach using Kohonen’s self-organizing maps. The dataset used for development and testing included yearly financial statements with 4058 observations for European composite insurance companies from 2012 to 2021. In a novel manner, the model investigates the behaviour of insurers, looking for similarities. The model forms a map. For the obtained groupings of companies from different geographical origins, a common characteristic was discovered regarding their future financial deterioration. A threshold defined using the solvency capital requirement (SCR) ratio being below 130% for the next year is applied to the map. On the test sample, the model correctly identified on average 86% of problematic companies and 79% of unproblematic companies. Changing the SCR ratio level enables differentiation into multiple map sections. The model does not rely on traditional methods, or the use of the SCR ratio as a dependent variable but looks for similarities in the actual insurer’s financial behaviour. The proposed approach offers grounds for a Suptech tool of predictive generation to support early detection of the possible future financial distress of an insurance company.

The European Union adopted the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (2022/2464/EU). The CSRD amends, among others, the Auditing Directive (2006/43/EC with amendments) in the light of establishing the European Union’s cornerstone rules in relation to the assurance of sustainability reporting of entities. The CSRD’s provisions mirror existing provisions concerning auditing for sustainability assurance to ensure consistent rules in the field. Nevertheless, there remain dilemmas, especially in the forthcoming transitional period. These are dilemmas that are systemic. For example, who will be capable of doing sustainability assurance engagements, which pronouncements in relation to sustainability assurance should be used, who should prepare them, what architecture should be established for education and training, by who, oversight dilemmas, etc. Our paper aims to present the CSRD’s provisions in relation to sustainability assurance and interlinked dilemmas. Slovenia will need to implement the CSRD’s provisions in relation to auditing into its legislation.