News | 16th November 2016

Grant Thornton joins Development Council as Assurance Partner

By Future-Fit

News release

Leading business and financial adviser Grant Thornton UK LLP is delighted to announce it has joined the Future-Fit Development Council as its Assurance Partner.

The Future-Fit Development Council consists of a select group of companies from across key industry sectors who are committed to true sustainability leadership and are willing to collaborate actively in the development of the Future-Fit Business Benchmark. Together, the Development Council members will help ensure that the tools created are both useable and useful across any industry. Grant Thornton joins existing members Avery Dennison, De Beers, Novo Nordisk and The Body Shop, and will augment the group by providing the insights of a professional services firm. Grant Thornton will also play a unique role as the Development Council’s Assurance Partner. Starting with the existing Future-Fit Key Fitness Indicator methodology, the firm will seek to develop a global assurance process by which any assurance provider will ultimately be able to assure a company’s reported future-fit data.

Sue Almond, Head of Assurance at Grant Thornton UK LLP, said: “At Grant Thornton our purpose is to help shape a vibrant economy. Fundamental to this is our need to help businesses and other dynamic organisations achieve future long term growth through developing sustainable growth plans. These should take into account both the environment and wider society in which the organisation operates and also allow them to measure and report on their performance against these factors. In addition to traditional financial reporting, we are now seeing an increased demand for organisations to report on a broader set of data and performance indicators. Future-Fit is at the cutting edge in developing a simple, meaningful and effective framework that will help define the next generation of extra-financial data reporting. It is essential that robust assurance processes are in place for this evolving style of reporting to ensure we continue to build trust and integrity in this area, which is central to our purpose. Our shared values make Future-Fit a natural partner for us and we are delighted to be working with them.”

Martin Rich, Future-Fit Foundation Co-founder and Chair, said: “The dynamic leadership and clear commitment to sustainable business practice within Grant Thornton made them an obvious partner for us. We are absolutely delighted to welcome them into the Development Council as our Assurance Partner and the first professional services member.”

Geoff Kendall, Future-Fit Foundation Co-founder and CEO, said: “The concept of self-reporting and third-party assurance is embedded in the heart of Future-Fit. This enables the framework to be both a valuable management tool for prioritizing company action and a consistent methodology by which to report progress to stakeholders. We are therefore thrilled to be working with Grant Thornton to make the assurance process a reality.”

Further information

For further information please contact:

Grant Thornton
Jenny Rutter, PR Executive
E: Jenny.E.Rutter@uk.gt.com
T: +44 20 7728 2457

Future-Fit Foundation
Martin Rich, Co-founder and Chair
E: martin@futurefitbuiness.org
T: +44 7747 761557

About Grant Thornton

Grant Thornton is one of the world’s leading organisations of independent assurance, tax and advisory firms. These firms help dynamic organisations unlock their potential for growth by providing meaningful, forward-thinking advice. Proactive teams, led by approachable partners in these firms, use insights, experience and instinct to understand complex issues for privately owned, publicly listed and public sector clients and help them to find solutions. More than 38,500 Grant Thornton people, across over 120 countries, are focused on making a difference to clients, colleagues and the communities in which we live and work. The UK Grant Thornton member firm provides services to over 40,000 privately held businesses, public interest entities and individuals. It is led by more than 185 partners and employs more than 4,200 of the profession’s brightest minds.

Find out more at grant-thornton.co.uk
© 2016 Grant Thornton UK LLP. All rights reserved.

About Future-Fit Foundation

Future-Fit Foundation is a UK registered charity founded in July 2013 whose vision is a world where businesses create value while in no way undermining – and ideally increasing – the possibility that humans and other life will flourish on Earth forever. To attain this vision demands radical and rapid action: given the urgency and scale of today’s global challenges, it is not enough for companies to strive only to be slightly better than their peers. Instead we must help transform the way our economy works, by seeking to change the behaviours of all key actors within it: companies, investors, governments and individuals. Our mission is to encourage and enable such behaviour change. All of our work is open source and published through a creative-commons licence.

Find out more at FutureFitBusiness.org.

Future-Fit

Future-Fit is the developer, promoter and steward of the Future-Fit methodology.