The Balkan Services team participated in the "A Legacy of Excellence: Future - Forward Business Solutions" conference. The event, organized by Kamburov & Partners - Tax Consulting and Advance Valuations (ADVANCE), was held on October 22 at the Millennium Hotel in Sofia. Ilka Kiselova, Senior ESG Consultant at Balkan Services, responded to a special invitation and was a guest panellist at the conference.
The panellists discussed investors' and regulators' adoption of ESG practices and how new sustainability reporting requirements will change business strategies in the long term.
"Bulgaria is one of the 'best performers' in transposing ESG directives compared to 17 other EU member states that have not yet implemented CRSDs into local law. But this distinction concerns only the deadline. For the overall preparation, we have yet to see the results," said Ilka Kiselova, Senior ESG Consultant at Balkan Services, during her participation in the panel discussion on ESG policies.
She reminded me that the Corporate Sustainability Responsibility Directive (CSRD) has been part of the accounting law since August of this year, and a month later, the Law on Independent Financial Audit and Expression of Assurance on Sustainability was adopted.
Ilka Kiselova pointed out that sustainability reporting is challenging for the participants involved. Specifically, "auditors in Bulgaria were put in a challenging situation with the law change, and they have to be trained on the new requirements in a short time".
She stressed that just as there are reporting standards in finance, there are now standards for sustainability reporting.
"What has been established for years as the practice of financial reporting -development of organization and teams, knowledge creation, respectively educational programs in universities, use of software for accounting records and reports in companies and everything else that concerns the presentation of financial results, is beginning to evolve along the lines of sustainability reporting," Ilka explained.
The ESG expert from our team added that most of the companies in the scope of sustainability reporting have been in the market for years, and their sustainability over time is the result of a lot of effort, both in the social and governance aspects, creating the right policies and choosing the right suppliers as partners, and in the environmental aspects, complying with all local and European regulatory norms.
"ESG reporting as an added value for companies is that they can prove objectively all the efforts they have put in so far and present them through the framework of standards. It is how companies can consciously communicate to their stakeholders what they have worked on, with effort and investment of time and resources."
In addition to our products at Balkan Services, we offer services to prepare and create a structured organization around ESG reporting.
Our portfolio also recently included Lucanet's specialized ESG reporting solution, which collects sustainability data, analyzes the information contained therein, and produces regulatory-compliant reports.
