European Financial Services SMEs: Language in Their Sustainability Reporting

Esther Ortiz-Martínez and Salvador Marín-Hernández
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Esther Ortiz-Martínez: Department of Accounting and Finance, University of Murcia, 3100 Murcia, Spain
Salvador Marín-Hernández: Department of Accounting and Finance, University of Murcia, 3100 Murcia, Spain

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 20, 1-20

Abstract: In this study we concentrate on the segment of small companies in the financial sector in Europe. Services in this sector are developing rapidly and are not necessarily provided only by traditional banks and financial companies. Many nonfinancial companies provide financial services, and this may open the sector to additional risk. In this context, the aspects of both financial and nonfinancial reporting are important and need to be taken into consideration as a whole to provide a complex picture of a particular institution. The goal of this paper is to analyze sustainability reporting according to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) by European financial services small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). First, we conducted a descriptive analysis of the features of nonfinancial information and its assurance, studying a sample of all European SMEs reporting according to the GRI from 2016 to 2018. Then, we chose only financial services SMEs to apply lexical analysis to their narrative reporting based on a corpus of 102,056 words. We conclude that nonfinancial information does not have the same importance as traditional financial information, and this sustainability reporting only complies with the minimum requirements. Thus, there is still a long way to go in this field.

Keywords: European financial services; SMEs; nonfinancial information; sustainable reporting; disclosure; lexical analysis; nonfinancial reporting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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