Assessing Climate Related Risks - A Practical Guide for Auditors (Jun 25)
Category: Audit | Duration: 1hr | Tag: VODATSUK25D2S6 | Type: Video | Course Level: Advanced | Speaker: Jose Hopkins, Stephen Pell | Date: 11/06/2025 15:30
Course Details
This session responds to the growing regulatory and professional focus on how climate-related risks impact audit quality and financial reporting. Since the FRC’s 2020 Climate Thematic Review, expectations have evolved significantly—reinforced by updated guidance such as FRS 102 Climate Fact Sheet 8, the IFRS Foundation’s guidance on climate-related matters, and the release of IFRS S1 and S2, now endorsed in the UK.
These developments are part of a wider landscape shift. The UK Met Office, through satellite-based analysis, has confirmed changes in the UK’s climate, including rising temperatures and biodiversity loss. In parallel, the UK government has issued long-term net zero commitments, and regulators have responded with incremental frameworks such as the UK Sustainability Disclosure Requirements (SDR), ISSB standards, and EU CSRD.
Audit professionals are now expected to assess, document, and challenge how climate risks, where material, affect valuations, provisions, and going concern assumptions. This session offers practical tools and real-world examples to help integrate climate-related risks into audit work in a way that is proportionate, effective, and aligned with current guidance
In this course Jose Antonio Hopkins and Stephen Pell cover the following topics:
- Overview of the Financial Reporting Council (FRC)’s role in audit quality oversight
- Key insights from the FRC’s Audit Quality Inspection and Supervision Report 2023/24
- Why climate risk is increasingly relevant to audit planning, scoping, and evidence gathering
- The impact of climate risks on financial statement assertions, including impairment and going concern
- Best practices and illustrative case studies to strengthen audit methodologies in this area
CPD Course Speaker
Sustainability Consultant at Acclaro
Jose Hopkins
Jose Hopkins ACA is a Chartered Accountant with 16 years of international experience across external audit, IFRS financial reporting, climate risk, sustainability reporting and assurance. He began his career with KPMG Chile, working on Minera Escondida, the world’s largest copper mine, before spending eight years with KPMG London managing complex global group audits and progressing to Senior Manager. He later joined a specialist KPMG team developing TCFD and climate-risk audit methodology and reviewing FCA TCFD-aligned reporting across listed companies.
Jose subsequently became Sustainability & ESG Technical Director at MHA/Baker Tilly, where he helped integrate sustainability and climate capability, methodology and processes across audit, assurance and advisory.
Today at Acclaro Advisory, he leads the sustainability assurance service line and supports organisations in building, reviewing and assuring the data, controls and reporting behind GHG inventories, CDP reporting, climate risk management and wider sustainability disclosures.
His experience spans mining and metals, chemicals and agribusiness, financial services, public sector, transport and mobility, facilities management, technology and data centres, and professional services. He works across frameworks and standards including TCFD, UK SRS, ISSB, GHG Protocol, ISO 14001/50001, ISAE 3410/3000, ISSA 5000, GRI, IFRS and FRS 102, with systems experience including SAP/1SAP, Hyperion, Position Green, Watershed and Carbon Alt Delete.
Jose is also an experienced CPD trainer, former postgraduate lecturer at the University of West London, and has spoken at ExCeL London and the House of Lords.
Jose subsequently became Sustainability & ESG Technical Director at MHA/Baker Tilly, where he helped integrate sustainability and climate capability, methodology and processes across audit, assurance and advisory.
Today at Acclaro Advisory, he leads the sustainability assurance service line and supports organisations in building, reviewing and assuring the data, controls and reporting behind GHG inventories, CDP reporting, climate risk management and wider sustainability disclosures.
His experience spans mining and metals, chemicals and agribusiness, financial services, public sector, transport and mobility, facilities management, technology and data centres, and professional services. He works across frameworks and standards including TCFD, UK SRS, ISSB, GHG Protocol, ISO 14001/50001, ISAE 3410/3000, ISSA 5000, GRI, IFRS and FRS 102, with systems experience including SAP/1SAP, Hyperion, Position Green, Watershed and Carbon Alt Delete.
Jose is also an experienced CPD trainer, former postgraduate lecturer at the University of West London, and has spoken at ExCeL London and the House of Lords.
neoeco
Stephen Pell
Stephen Pell is the co-founder and CEO of neoeco, and the creator of Financially-integrated Sustainability Management (FiSM)—a new category built to bring sustainability and finance into strategic alignment.
A former Auditor, Chartered Accountant, Chartered Tax Advisor, and two-time Accounting Excellence Award winner, Stephen has spent his career helping businesses make better decisions through better data. After scaling and exiting an award-winning accounting firm, he saw a new problem emerging: sustainability reporting had become a fragmented mess—filled with compliance theatre, disconnected data, and frameworks that failed to support real strategy. He set out to change that.
As a contributor to the ACCA Sustainability Guide, Stephen has helped define how finance teams can lead the sustainability transition—not as box-tickers, but as the truth-tellers and system-fixers modern business demands. He believes accountants and CFOs are uniquely positioned to drive impact, expose harmful practices, and lead with integrity.
With neoeco, Stephen is making sustainability reporting make sense again: simple, strategic, and decision-ready. No fluff. No ESG theatre. Just powerful tools that empower teams to act on what really matters—turning responsibility into competitive advantage.
A former Auditor, Chartered Accountant, Chartered Tax Advisor, and two-time Accounting Excellence Award winner, Stephen has spent his career helping businesses make better decisions through better data. After scaling and exiting an award-winning accounting firm, he saw a new problem emerging: sustainability reporting had become a fragmented mess—filled with compliance theatre, disconnected data, and frameworks that failed to support real strategy. He set out to change that.
As a contributor to the ACCA Sustainability Guide, Stephen has helped define how finance teams can lead the sustainability transition—not as box-tickers, but as the truth-tellers and system-fixers modern business demands. He believes accountants and CFOs are uniquely positioned to drive impact, expose harmful practices, and lead with integrity.
With neoeco, Stephen is making sustainability reporting make sense again: simple, strategic, and decision-ready. No fluff. No ESG theatre. Just powerful tools that empower teams to act on what really matters—turning responsibility into competitive advantage.