“Bringing Financial Reporting
into the 21st Century”

Emeritus Professor Peter Wells FRSN
UTS Business School
University of Technology Sydney

Date: Wednesday, 3 September 6.00–7.30 pm AEST
Venue: Zoom webinar
Entry: No charge
All are welcome

Please click here to join the
Zoom webinar on 3 September at 6.00 pm AEST

Business of the Meeting

The Agenda for the Ordinary General Meeting will be made available on the Meetings page of the website.

Summary: Financial reporting is a communication process, and while accounting processes have been refined, the basic format has changed little for over 150 years. However, the increasing volume and complexity of information have rendered this format obsolete. This problem is now being exacerbated by extensions to corporate reporting, which now includes reporting on climate and sustainability. Digital Financial Reporting is the technology designed to address this. It allows for ever larger volumes of information to be accessed accurately and efficiently, and perhaps most importantly, processed and evaluated with computers (e.g., with AI). Digital Financial Reporting has been increasingly mandated across the world’s major capital markets, but regrettably not in Australia or New Zealand. What does this mean for the Australian economy? The impacts are significant, and perhaps the most relevant at this point in time is lost productivity.

So, what has to be done? Who is responsible? What are the risks? Where to next?

After starting his accounting career with an antecedent of one of the large accounting firms and working in the finance sector, Peter Wells has spent the last 30 years as an accounting academic at the University of Technology Sydney, with a focus on financial reporting practices and the use of financial information in financial markets.

Peter is a Fellow of Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand and was on the NSW Regional Council for six years and Chair for one year. Peter has prepared reports on Digital Financial Reporting for Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand and made submissions to Parliamentary Committees on financial reporting practices in Australia. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of NSW and currently holds the position of Treasurer.

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