The Financial Reporting Council is the United Kingdom's regulator for auditors, accountants and actuaries, and the country's corporate governance standard-setter. It sets accounting, auditing, ethical and actuarial standards, supervises audit firms, reviews the quality of audits and of published corporate reports, and enforces against professional misconduct. Legislation has been proposed to replace it with a stronger statutory body, the Audit, Reporting and Governance Authority.
What the FRC publishes
- The UK Corporate Governance Code and the UK Stewardship Code, with their associated guidance
- UK and Ireland accounting standards, principally FRS 100 to FRS 105
- Auditing standards (ISAs UK), ethical standards and actuarial technical standards
- Audit Quality Review findings and firm-specific inspection results
- Corporate Reporting Review outcomes and thematic reviews
- Enforcement decisions, sanctions and annual enforcement reviews
Why it matters for compliance teams
The FRC's audit quality findings and thematic reviews are a reliable early signal of what auditors will press on next reporting cycle, and its corporate reporting reviews name the disclosure weaknesses it is currently challenging. For listed companies, the Governance and Stewardship Codes operate on comply-or-explain, so the guidance matters as much as the code text.
Seqlense DOC indexes FRC standards, reviews and enforcement decisions in full text alongside the UKEB's adopted accounting standards and the FCA's listing requirements they sit beside.