The Sustainability & ESG standard has always said that reporting should survive an audit. From this cycle, the council has made that expectation explicit at Level 3. Assurance readiness, already one of the six capability areas, becomes a mandatory requirement for BIPS Professional (BIPS-Pro), the level at which a candidate owns reporting for an organisation and is accountable for its accuracy.
Why Level 3
At BIPS Practitioner, candidates collect and prepare disclosure data under the direction of a senior lead. The judgement about whether that data is fit to publish sits with someone else. At BIPS Professional, it sits with the candidate. Our employer panel, which includes both reporting teams and assurance providers, told us plainly that the most common weakness they see is not in reporting technique but in the evidence behind it: figures that are probably right, but cannot be traced back to source without weeks of reconstruction.
A number you cannot evidence is a number you are asking the reader to take on trust. Assurance exists precisely because they should not have to.
What assessors now look for
The assessment route is unchanged: portfolio, evidence review, professional discussion, and award and register. What changes is the weight placed on the trail behind the disclosure. At Level 3, portfolios must include evidence that the candidate has built or owned:
- A documented methodology for at least one material metric, including boundaries and estimation choices.
- A traceable path from a disclosed figure back to its source data.
- Controls and review points that would let an external party test the figure.
- A record of how a data gap or estimation issue was identified and handled.
Commercially sensitive material can be redacted. During evidence review, the assessor follows at least one disclosed figure through the candidate’s trail. In the professional discussion, candidates are asked where their evidence is weakest and what they would do about it if an auditor arrived next month.
The council is explicit that assurance readiness is not about producing more documentation for its own sake. A concise, well-organised trail that an assessor can follow in an afternoon is stronger evidence than a large archive that only its author can navigate.
What this means for candidates
For many candidates this will simply formalise work they already do. For others, particularly finance professionals taking on disclosure for the first time, it may mean building one clean end-to-end trail before applying. Advisers can review a draft portfolio against the new requirement, and existing BIPS-Pro holders will see assurance readiness reflected in CPD guidance at their next renewal.