Digital financial reporting: Australia’s quiet productivity game-changer for CFOs
By making data easy to extract and analyse, digital financial reporting creates the foundation for more efficient operations, smarter decision-making and stronger long-term performance.
As Australian CFOs intensify their focus on boosting productivity, one practical, high-impact solution presents an easy win: digital financial reporting.
While popular productivity initiatives like automation, AI and reimagined workforce strategies often involve large-scale transformation, digital financial reporting presents an effective way to unlock significant economic value for Australia.
But what is it? Put simply, digital corporate reporting refers to companies lodging financial reports in structured globally standard data formats like XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) that make financial and climate data machine-readable, comparable and more accessible.
While 90 per cent of the world’s leading economies have already mandated or are phasing in mandatory digital reporting, we remain one of the few advanced global economies still collecting financials for our major companies in static PDFs.
Static PDFs are a file format popularised in the early 1990s. They fail to support real-time decision-making or provide machine-readable data for global investors, regulators and analysts. Ultimately, valuable information is locked in formats that are difficult and time consuming to analyse.
Digital financial reporting, on the other hand, helps streamline compliance and enhance transparency. By making data easy to extract and analyse, it creates the foundation for more efficient operations, smarter decision-making and stronger long-term performance. It also improves access to trusted data, helping to lower the cost of attracting global capital.
As AI transforms how capital is allocated, digital financial reporting becomes even more critical. Structured data within a clear taxonomy enables AI and machine learning to analyse information more effectively than unstructured data from non-digital reports. AI can automate data extraction and processing, reducing errors and speeding up report generation. Ultimately leading to more reliable financial disclosures.
Recognising this potential, Deloitte Access Economics estimates that mandating digital financial reporting for large businesses could add $7.7 billion per year to Australia’s economy by 2030. Extend that to climate disclosures and the gains could be even greater.
Making digital financial and climate reporting compulsory is the only way to capture these business and economy-wide gains. Earlier this month, the Productivity Commission released an interim report that backed making it compulsory for disclosing entities (as defined in the Corporations Act) as a first step.
The Commission made the point that although it has been possible for certain Australian entities to voluntarily lodge digital financial reports since 2010, the take-up has been negligible.
Yet the landscape is shifting, and Deloitte’s latest CFO Sentiment Survey reveals that technology implementation and digital disruption are among the fastest-growing concerns for CFOs. At the same time, there’s a renewed push to boost productivity, with 65 per cent of surveyed businesses making long-term strategic and transformational investments to improve efficiency.
Digital financial reporting aligns squarely with these priorities, helping organisations harness technology to streamline processes, unlock insights, and strengthen their competitive position.
Inaction, however, carries significant cost. That is why, in addition to the Productivity Commission’s statements on this issue, Deloitte and Chartered Accountants ANZ (CA ANZ) have renewed their call to boost productivity by mandating digital corporate reporting. This is a clear signal that industry and policy leaders alike recognise the time to act is now, particularly as the Federal Government hosts its Economic Reform Roundtable in Canberra this week.
Investors, as well as industry, are increasingly realising the importance of a mandate. A 2024 CA ANZ survey found that 71 per cent of Australian investors support compulsory digital financial reporting.
A further 90 per cent said it would improve access to financial data, and more than half of CA ANZ members agree. There is clearly strong demand for reform from both investors and the profession.
Without a digital framework, new sustainability reporting risks being delivered through an even greater volume of PDFs — creating confusion, duplication and inefficiency.
The question for Australia isn’t whether we can do it, but why we haven’t acted sooner. Cost barriers that once slowed adoption have diminished. Software is more affordable, and cloud infrastructure is widespread.
Despite these advances, finding information about Australian companies remains harder than in almost any other developed economy. As a result, we are somewhat digitally invisible to investors overseas.
Digital financial reporting is one of the most overlooked productivity levers available today — a simple idea that can have a transformative impact on the Australian economy and business.
To realise its potential, we must invest in the digital infrastructure needed to support the transition and work across government to eliminate duplicative reporting requirements.
The path forward is clear. CFOs must champion digital financial reporting reforms, collaborating with regulators, investors and government to build a modern reporting ecosystem. This commitment will help future proofing Australian business, unlock growth and ensure Australia remains competitive in an increasingly digital global economy.
Jacquie Fegent-McGeachie is Deloitte Australia Partner and Amir Ghandar FCA is Chartered Accountants ANZ Reporting & Assurance Leader.
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