Measuring effectiveness of anti-corruption programmes /Indicators for company reporting/ /

Corruption remains a serious challenge for companies in most parts of the world and across all industries. It undermines economic efficiency, disadvantages compliant companies and is detrimental to shareholder value.

Corruption exposes companies to legal and financial risks through penalties and blacklisting. In addition, corruption exposes companies, their investors, and their business partners to significant reputational risk. To prevent corruption, many companies have developed extensive anti-corruption programmes and communicate their anti-corruption efforts to external stakeholders.

However, there is still relatively limited public reporting on tools, approaches and metrics used to measure the effectiveness of anti-corruption efforts. For investors, such information is important to analyse opportunities and risks to investments.

Therefore, Norges Bank Investment Management has published expectations of companies on anti-corruption1 which emphasise that companies should disclose how they measure the effectiveness of their anticorruption programmes. These expectations are based on internationally recognised principles such as the UN Global Compact and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises.

Such disclosures could also be useful to build trust with external stakeholders, mitigate reputational risk and identify best practices.

This guidance note contains a set of indicators that companies may wish to consider when reporting on the effectiveness of their anti-corruption efforts to external stakeholders.