UK Finance has called for an overhaul of corporate reporting rules after research found FTSE 100 annual reports have grown 27% longer since 2019 and now average more than 150,000 words.
The banking and finance trade body published the report with DLA Piper, arguing that the volume and duplication of disclosure requirements can make it harder for investors to identify useful information.
Annual reports now routinely exceed 250 pages, according to the research, which drew on desk-based analysis and interviews with market participants in the UK, European Union, and US.
The report, Value, Not Volume: Market Disclosure in a Digital World, proposes a combination of near-term reforms and a broader review of the disclosure framework.
Recommendations include simplifying narrative reporting required under the Companies Act, reducing overlap between reports and statements, allowing static information to be published online rather than repeated annually, and removing disclosures considered to add little value.
UK Finance also wants closer alignment of requirements around forward-looking statements and greater harmonisation of sustainability reporting over the medium term.
The organisation argues that reform should improve the usefulness of disclosure rather than reduce transparency. Its proposals arrive during a wider review of Britain’s corporate-reporting architecture, with the government consulting on modernising corporate reporting and the Financial Conduct Authority preparing a review of its Disclosure and Transparency Rules.
Those processes create an opportunity to revisit a system that has accumulated requirements from company law, securities regulation, governance expectations, sustainability frameworks, accounting standards, and other disclosure regimes.
The growth of annual reports illustrates the tension. More information can increase transparency, but length alone does not guarantee that investors can identify important information quickly. Repeated disclosures and static corporate information can increase production costs while adding to the work required to interpret a company’s position.
The issue extends beyond listed-company finance departments. Annual-report production involves boards, audit committees, company secretaries, lawyers, auditors, sustainability teams, investor-relations functions, and external advisers. Changes to reporting requirements therefore affect both internal workload and a substantial professional-services market.
Technology adds another dimension. Corporate reports were historically designed around a printed document, even as investors increasingly consume information through digital filings, data platforms, company websites, and machine-readable formats.
UK Finance’s proposal to move static information online reflects a wider question over whether information that changes infrequently must be reproduced in full every year or could instead be maintained through a permanent digital record.
Simplification will have to be balanced against concerns about accountability and comparability. Investors, regulators, employees, campaign groups, and other stakeholders use company reports for different purposes, and information that appears low-value to one group may be important to another.
Materiality and consistency are therefore central to any reform. A shorter reporting framework improves the system only if the information retained remains sufficiently comparable, accessible, and reliable.
Moving information outside the annual report can also create questions around permanence and version control. Investors need to know which information applied at a particular reporting date and whether material changes have been made subsequently.
Sustainability disclosure is another area in which requirements have expanded. Businesses operating across several markets can encounter overlapping frameworks and different definitions while investors increasingly expect comparable environmental, social, and governance information alongside financial reporting.
The recommendation for greater harmonisation reflects the burden of navigating those overlapping regimes, particularly for companies with international operations or listings.
The debate also sits alongside efforts to improve the competitiveness of UK public markets. Reporting requirements are only one factor in listing decisions, alongside access to capital, valuations, governance, investor depth, and regulatory predictability.
Reducing unnecessary duplication would not resolve those wider pressures by itself, but corporate disclosure is an area where policymakers can alter recurring compliance costs and the way information reaches the market.
The government’s consultation and FCA review will determine how much of the simplification agenda translates into rule changes. The central test will be whether reporting can become less repetitive without weakening the transparency, comparability, and accountability on which public markets depend.
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