Independent Assurance Report to Commercial Bank of Ceylon PLC
Introduction
We were engaged by the Board of Directors of Commercial Bank of Ceylon PLC ("the Company") to provide assurance on the following elements of the Sustainability Reporting incorporated in the Integrated Annual Report 2012 ("Report") for the year ended December 31, 2012:
- Reasonable assurance on the data on financial performance,
as reported on 'Financial Highlights' section of the Report.
- Limited assurance on Key Performance Indicators ("KPI") specified on Annexes section of the Report 2012;
Managements' Responsibilities and the Criteria Applied
Management is responsible for the preparation and presentation of the Report in accordance with the GRI Sustainability Reporting Guidelines as described in 'Management Discussion and Analysis' of the Report and the information and assertions contained within it: for determining the Company's objectives in respect of sustainable development performance and reporting, including the identification of stakeholder and material issues, and for establishing and maintaining appropriate performance management and internal control systems from which the reported performance information is derived.
Our Responsibilities and Compliance with SLSAE 3000
Our responsibility is to carry out a reasonable and limited assurance engagement and to express a conclusion based on the work performed. We conducted our engagement in accordance with the Sri Lanka Standard on Assurance Engagements 3000: Assurance Engagements Other Than Audits or Reviews of Historical Financial Information, issued by The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka.
This Standard requires amongst others that we comply with applicable ethical requirements, including independence requirements, and plan and perform the engagement to obtain reasonable and limited assurance about whether the Report is free of material misstatement.
Summary of Work Performed
Financial Data
A reasonable assurance engagement on financial performance reported on 'Financial Highlights' section of the Report involves verification that they were properly derived from the Audited Financial Statements of the Company for the year ended December 31, 2012.
Key Performance Indicators
A limited assurance engagement on Key Performance Indicators in the Report consists of making inquiries, primarily of persons responsible for the preparation of information presented in the sustainability report, and applying analytical and other evidence gathering procedures, as appropriate. These procedures included:
- Inquiries of management to gain an understanding of the Company's processes for determining the material issues for the Company's key stakeholder groups.
- Interviews with senior management and relevant staff at group level and selected business unit level concerning sustainability strategy and policies for material issues, and the implementation of these across
the business.
- Interviews with relevant staff at corporate and business unit level responsible for providing the information in the Report.
- Inquiries about the design and implementation of the systems and methods used to collect and process the information reported, including the aggregation of data into information as presented in the Report.
- Comparing the information presented in the Report to corresponding information in the relevant underlying sources to determine whether all the relevant information contained in such underlying sources has been included in the Report.
- Reading the information presented in the Report to determine whether it is in line with our overall knowledge of, and experience with, the sustainability performance of the Company.
- Visits to selected project sites and branches to review systems and data.
Our Conclusion
Based on the procedures performed, as described above, we
conclude that -
- The data on financial performance, as reported on 'Financial Highlights' section of the Report 2012 are properly derived from the Financial Statements of the Company for the year ended 31 December 31, 2012 for which the Independent Auditors have issued an unqualified audit opinion dated February 27, 2013 on Financial Reports section of this Report.
- Nothing has come to our attention that causes us to believe that the Performance Indicators presented in the Report are not fairly presented, in all material respects, in accordance with the GRI Sustainability Reporting Guidelines as described in Management Discussion and Analysis section of the Report.
Chartered Accountants
Colombo
February 27, 2013