Old Mutual South Africa - Corporate Citizenship Report 2002

To determine the quality of Old Mutual’s reporting process, it is necessary to assess this report critically against the core quality principles that have been identified by AccountAbility:
	Completeness requires the unbiased inclusion — over time — of all appropriate areas of activity.
	Comparability: both with previous reporting periods and with external benchmarks.
	Inclusivity: involving appropriate dialogue with all stakeholders.
	Regularity and Evolution: the periodic preparation of accounts and conducting audits at appropriate times.
	Embeddedness: incorporating the process within existing strategic and managerial practice.
	Disclosure.
	External verification by an independent third party.
	Continuous improvement.
All these principles imply a developmental process and improvement over time — it would therefore be inappropriate to subject this first report to a rigid assessment against these principles. Rather, the commitment to the principles themselves should be emphasised. The assessment of such a commitment — as well as an assessment of the quality of the process — will only be possible during future cycles. In terms of the Quality Scoring Framework1 (presented below), Old Mutual believes that it has reached Stage 3, incorporating some elements of Stage 4.

STAGE 1	STAGE 2	STAGE 3	STAGE 4	STAGE 5
Process / report of social mission / aims and ad hoc descriptive elements	Occasional descriptive report / process covering different stakeholders, including specific policies	Regular report / process with stakeholder consultation, indicators and financial data, explicit policies, internal systems	Regular externally verified report / process with two-way stakeholder dialogue indicators, targets and benchmarks and commitments to comprehensive coverage over time	Regular externally verified sustainability statement or process with linkages to allied areas (e.g. financial and environmental data)
¹ Making Values Count: Contemporary Experience in Social and Ethical Accounting, Auditing and Reporting (Claudia Gonella, Alison Pilling and Simon Zadek), AccountAbility Research Report 57, Certified Accountants Educational Trust, London, 1998.