how to write an annual report summary

Be Stress Free and Tax Ready 🙌 70% Off for 4 Months. BUY NOW & SAVE

70% Off for 4 Months Buy Now & Save

Wow clients with professional invoices that take seconds to create

Quick and easy online, recurring, and invoice-free payment options

Automated, to accurately track time and easily log billable hours

Reports and tools to track money in and out, so you know where you stand

Easily log expenses and receipts to ensure your books are always tax-time ready

Tax time and business health reports keep you informed and tax-time ready

Automatically track your mileage and never miss a mileage deduction again

Time-saving all-in-one bookkeeping that your business can count on

Track project status and collaborate with clients and team members

Organized and professional, helping you stand out and win new clients

Set clear expectations with clients and organize your plans for each project

Client management made easy, with client info all in one place

Pay your employees and keep accurate books with Payroll software integrations

• Team Management

FreshBooks integrates with over 100 partners to help you simplify your workflows

Send invoices, track time, manage payments, and more…from anywhere.

• Freelancers
• Self-Employed Professionals
• Businesses With Employees
• Businesses With Contractors
• Marketing & Agencies
• Construction & Trades
• IT & Technology
• Business & Prof. Services
• Accounting Partner Program
• Collaborative Accounting™
• Accountant Hub
• Reports Library
• FreshBooks vs QuickBooks
• FreshBooks vs HoneyBook
• FreshBooks vs Harvest
• FreshBooks vs Wave
• FreshBooks vs Xero
• Free Invoice Generator
• Invoice Templates
• Accounting Templates
• Business Name Generator
• Estimate Templates
• Help Center
• Business Loan Calculator
• Mark Up Calculator

Call Toll Free: 1.866.303.6061

1-888-674-3175

• All Articles
• Productivity
• Project Management
• Bookkeeping

Resources for Your Growing Business

How to write an annual report: 4 tips for getting started.

Connecting with shareholders, investors , and the public is key to growing your small business. Your annual report communicates the strength of your business, so your current shareholders can feel confident knowing how your business operates. It’s also a chance to build new relationships with investors and clients by showcasing your management, financial performance, company mission, and goals. 

Learning to write strong annual reports is important for delivering required year-end documents, but it can also help you forge personal connections. Explore the essential components of the annual report, as well as strategies for adding a creative touch that sets your business apart.

Key Takeaways

• An annual report communicates your business affairs to stakeholders and the public
• It typically includes mission goals, financial position, structure, and strategies
• Depending on the size of your business, you may be legally required to provide an annual report
• A good annual report can also be used as a marketing tool
• Aim to create an annual report that’s clear, honest, and engaging

What this article covers:

What Is an Annual Report?

What to include in an annual report, how do you write a good annual report, why is an annual report important.

• Frequently Asked Questions

To write an annual report, the business operations and the financial position are listed, summarized, and recorded. The annual report is a financial document businesses provide to shareholders, potential investors, and analysts. It is the best source of information about the business performance and financial well-being of a business.

Publicly traded companies are required to file annual reports to the Securities and Exchange Commission. However, small businesses and non-profit organizations also prepare yearly reports to connect with customers and provide information about yearly operations, past performance, and future goals.

The annual report is an integral part of corporate reporting. Since the annual reports are based on specific legal requirements , the items included in the report vary.

Most annual reports provide a fundamental overview of the business over the past year. The sections typically included in an annual report are an opening letter from the chairman, a business profile, an analysis by management, and financial data.

Chairman’s Letter

Annual reports usually start with an introduction and a letter from the company’s chairman, primary owner, or CEO to the shareholders providing a snapshot of the significant developments in the past financial year, company initiatives, and a brief summary of the financials. Key elements included in this section are the challenges that the business faced, its successes, and insight into the growth of the company.

A table of contents follows the section.

Business Profile

This section includes the vision and mission statement of the company, details of directors, officers, and registered and corporate office, investor profile, the products or services that are the main source of revenue for the business, competitor profile, and risk factors of the business.

Management Discussion and Analysis

The section provides an overview of the business performance over the past three years and discusses profit margins, sales, and income

If the business has launched a new product or service or there are drastic shifts in sales and marketing efforts, this section should include them. The other topics of discussion include new hires, business acquisitions, and other information that the management thinks would benefit the stakeholders.

Financial Statements

The financial statements are the most important part of the annual report that allows current and future investors, shareholders, employees, and other business stakeholders to determine how well the company has performed in the past, its ability to pay off its debts , its cash flow, and its plans for growth. The statements that are included are:

• Balance sheet
• Cash flow statement
• Income statement
• Statement to shareholders

These statements show whether the company has made a profit or loss in the past year, how much earnings it has retained, and the proportion of revenues to operational expenses the previous year. Apart from the financial statements, information about the market price of shares of the company and the dividends paid have to be provided.

Looking for an easier way to organize your accounts? FreshBooks’ bookkeeping software lets you manage your own bookkeeping with easy filing methods and specialist support. Click here to get started.

Other elements included in the year-end report are:

• Notes to accounts with details about the accounting policies
• Comments by auditors on the financials of the company.
• Disclaimers about forecasted income and expenses
• Stories, infographics, and photographs

Annual reports are important elements of a brand’s transparency and accountability. However, rather than writing a ponderous document that only a few can understand, businesses are creating annual reports that speak to a broad group of people.

These reports communicate the values and goals of the company’s mission and brand. Producing a highly visual and narrative-driven interactive annual report can help businesses connect with shareholders, investors, and customers. Aim to include visual elements throughout the entire report to keep the document engaging.

Determine the Key Message

Annual reports are a perfect opportunity to highlight your accomplishments and the impact of these accomplishments. The investors and employees want to know what you did and why you did it. By connecting your business activities and your accomplishments to the final goals and mission statement, businesses can build trust and foster long-lasting connections.

Finalize Structure and Content

One of the most difficult parts of writing an annual report is deciding what to include and leave out. It’s important to map out the report’s content and structure.

Apart from the basic elements such as the introduction, chairman’s letter, business profile, and financial statement, the annual report should have a storyline that defines the report’s overall structure and shapes the content around a narrative thread. This makes identifying and cutting out information that does not actively move the story forward easier.

Use clear, precise, and unambiguous writing. Maintain a professional and unbiased position throughout the document. The content of the annual report should be transparent and honest. Don’t inflate accomplishments or disguise the losses that you faced.

Make writing your annual report easier by keeping clear and detailed records as you go. FreshBooks’ accounting templates help you organize your expenses, income, and receipts so you’ve got everything ready for the end of the year. Click here to start your free trial and learn how FreshBooks can help make accounting easy.

Use Compelling Design

A well-designed, engaging, professional report can be used as a marketing tool by a business. Ideally, readers should be able to scan through the document and get the relevant information they need. Here are some pointers for a good annual report design:

• Use headings and subheadings
• Devote space to photographs, infographics, and other compelling visual elements
• Keep the text short and simple
• Use a bold and complimentary color scheme and layout techniques that are in sync with your brand
• Emphasize key areas with colored text boxes, quotes, and captions

Plan in Advance

Creating an annual report is a long-term process that requires an organized system for recording and tracking data, media clipping, photographs, and a list of business achievements. While a number of companies create the annual reports in-house, others may hire a design firm to compile, proofread and finalize the document.

Ready to create a clear and compelling digital annual report? FreshBooks’ reports feature lets you explore report templates, performance tools, and accounting details so you can write your reports in-house. Try it free to begin your annual report today.

Both public and private companies use annual reports to provide important business and financial information to customers, investors, employees, and the media. Here are some reasons why writing annual reports is necessary for businesses:

• Provides an opportunity to highlight a company’s key achievements, expectations for the coming year, and overall goals and objectives
• Gives information on the company’s financial position
• Introduce you’re the key members of the business to stakeholders and the general public
• Tells shareholders and employees the company’s strategy for growth in the coming year
• Useful as a decision-making tool for managers

The annual reports keep your critical business information up to date. A failure by public companies to update the investors and the state might result in late fees or even the dissolution of your company.

Writing an annual report is essential for communicating your business position to shareholders, investors, and the public. Depending on the size of your company, you may also be legally required to produce annual reports for the Securities and Exchange Commission. 

Your annual report should include four main components: the chairman’s letter, a profile of your business, an analysis of your management strategies, and your financial statements. Adding creative elements like graphic design and a narrative can also help your annual report double as a marketing tool. Learning to create a strong annual report is essential for guiding management decisions in your company and connecting to those who support and grow your business.

FAQs on How to Write an Annual Report

How do you write an annual report for a small business.

Writing the annual report for a small business follows a similar process as writing for a large company – you should include a chairman’s letter, business profile, management analysis, and financial statements. However, since you’re writing for a smaller business, you also have more flexibility to be creative. You can tailor your report to shareholders or make it a public-oriented document that you can use to market your small business.

Who Prepares the Annual Report?

Companies may have their own in-house writing and design team, or they may choose to hire an outside firm to prepare their report. Teams usually include accounting, writing, and graphic design professionals. 

Which Things Should be Avoided while Writing a Report?

Avoid leaving your annual report to the last minute, trying to mask challenges your business has faced, or overloading the report with details and jargon. The aim is to be clear in your communication – be upfront about both your successes and losses, and write with accessible language that’s understandable to all your readers.

What are the 5 Basic Structures of a Report?

A good report can be structured in a simple 5-part setup to showcase your company’s performance. These sections are:

1. Introduction

3. Comments and disclaimers

4. Conclusion

5. References 

You’ll start with a brief overview, then provide the body of information. Comments and disclaimers should explain any claims or facts, then summarize your information in the conclusion and cite any external references.

What are the 4 components of an annual report?

There are 4 key components to include when writing an annual report:

    1. Chairman’s letter

    2. Business profile

    3. Management analysis

    4. Financial statements

You can also include creative elements like stories, infographics, and photographs to make your report more visually engaging to your target audience.

Kristen Slavin, CPA

About the author

1000 more rows at the bottom Kristen Slavin is a CPA with 16 years of experience, specializing in accounting, bookkeeping, and tax services for small businesses. A member of the CPA Association of BC, she also holds a Master’s Degree in Business Administration from Simon Fraser University. In her spare time, Kristen enjoys camping, hiking, and road tripping with her husband and two children. In 2022 Kristen founded K10 Accounting. The firm offers bookkeeping and accounting services for business and personal needs, as well as ERP consulting and audit assistance.

RELATED ARTICLES

Save Time Billing and Get Paid 2x Faster With FreshBooks

Want More Helpful Articles About Running a Business?

Get more great content in your Inbox.

By subscribing, you agree to receive communications from FreshBooks and acknowledge and agree to FreshBook’s Privacy Policy . You can unsubscribe at any time by contacting us at [email protected].

👋 Welcome to FreshBooks

To see our product designed specifically for your country, please visit the United States site.

• Link to facebook
• Link to linkedin
• Link to twitter
• Link to youtube
• Writing Tips

How to Write an Annual Report

• 5-minute read
• 15th March 2023

Writing an annual report can be an overwhelming task to undertake. In this article, we’ll cover what an annual report is, what to include in it, and a step-by-step guide on how to write one.

What’s an Annual Report?

An annual report is a comprehensive overview of a business. It covers the business’s accomplishments in the past year, including growth, projections, impacts, and financial statements. Typically, annual reports are for the shareholders and stakeholders of a company and showcase how their investments have benefited the company. The report also presents future plans and goals.

What to Include in an Annual Report

An annual report can include a lot of information such as financial statements, sales, product descriptions, growth projections, and research and development activity from the past year. It can range from 10 to 100 pages depending on how in-depth you showcase your business and what your shareholders and stakeholders want to know. Here’s a brief list of what you might need to include in your annual report:

●  Company details

●  Financial statements

●  Sales numbers

●  A letter from the CEO

●  Future product or service plans

●  Market information and projections

●  Marketing strategies

Writing an Annual Report

1. plan and prepare.

Before writing, make a list of what you need to include in the report. You can start with the items listed above. Ask a supervisor or send out a survey to your customers and investors on what information they would like to be updated on.

2. Collect Data, Stats, Forms, and Statements

Once you have an idea of what you want to include in the report, collect all needed secondary information and data. This may include sales reports, financial statements, and customer reviews. Be thorough and make sure you have all the necessary documents to impress your readers.

3. Outline Goals, Projects, and Future Plans

This is the main purpose of an annual report. Stakeholders, shareholders, customers, and even employees want to know where the company or business is going. They need to see growth, stability, and security. For example, are you planning to expand your business ? Do you have a new product or service in the making? Are you wanting to meet certain sales figures? Do you plan to revamp your marketing strategy or hire new employees? Be sure you have clear answers to these questions before you start writing your report.

4. Outline Your Annual Report

Now that you have all the information needed, you can start outlining and organizing your annual report. While you should always start by introducing who you are as a business, the rest is up to you (assuming you don’t have an outline to work from). Be sure to also include any negatives from the past year, such as not meeting sales expectations or high employee turnover. Be transparent and authentic and provide explanations and solutions.

An additional section to consider is an executive summary so people can get an overview of the report if they don’t have the time to read 100 pages. For this same reason, you should consider putting the most important information at the front of the report.

Depending on how long your report is or how many sections you hope to cover, writing is probably the most daunting part of the process. However, if you have all the required information gathered and a solid outline, it shouldn’t take too long or be too tedious. Here are some tips for business writing :

Find this useful?

Subscribe to our newsletter and get writing tips from our editors straight to your inbox.

●  Set a timer and give yourself lots of breaks

●  Be brief and to the point

●  If possible avoid excessive jargon or technical terms

●  Use a consistent tone

●  Use the active voice

●  Keep it simple

●  Make it skimmable (short paragraphs, bullet and numbered lists)

Now that you have all the text and information written, it’s time to beautify the document to make it visually appealing. This will also include adding and formatting any figures, charts, and graphs you want to include. You should also consider whether you want to print or digitize the text to determine formatting requirements, such as hyperlinks within the text or a reference section at the end. Here are some other things to consider when formatting:

●  A cover page

●  A table of contents

●  A glossary

●  Easy-to-read font and font size

●  Contrasting colors in your color scheme

7. Edit and Proofread

Once everything is in place (text, charts, figures, and other formatting specifications) it’s time to read everything again, then again, and probably one more time. Keep in mind that editing and proofreading are different processes and should be treated as such. While it’s important to catch every spelling and punctuation mistake (proofreading), also take the time to solely focus on the content, readability, and overall organization of the annual report (editing).

Writing an annual report is not an easy task. It requires an immense amount of planning, preparation, writing, editing, and proofreading. At Proofed, we understand the importance of high-quality and error-free business writing. Be sure to try our free proofreading trial of up to 500 words today. Our editors can also help you format your annual report, so check out our formatting services too!

Share this article:

Post A New Comment

Got content that needs a quick turnaround? Let us polish your work. Explore our editorial business services.

3-minute read

What Is a Content Editor?

Are you interested in learning more about the role of a content editor and the...

4-minute read

The Benefits of Using an Online Proofreading Service

Proofreading is important to ensure your writing is clear and concise for your readers. Whether...

2-minute read

6 Online AI Presentation Maker Tools

Creating presentations can be time-consuming and frustrating. Trying to construct a visually appealing and informative...

What Is Market Research?

No matter your industry, conducting market research helps you keep up to date with shifting...

8 Press Release Distribution Services for Your Business

In a world where you need to stand out, press releases are key to being...

How to Get a Patent

In the United States, the US Patent and Trademarks Office issues patents. In the United...

Make sure your writing is the best it can be with our expert English proofreading and editing.

How To Write An Annual Report

Here is our guide to help you write your annual report, complete with industry-focused toc's. bonus section: deep-dive on the executive summary., introduction to annual reports.

• Establish a style guide: This is especially important when various people are working on writing and editing the report. A style guide prescribes language and tone of voice, but also serves consistency with rules for date formats, capitalization of words, hyphenation, acronyms, branding, and spelling.
• Determine the key messages upfront: Don’t use the writing process to “discover” the message(s) you want to convey in your annual report! In turn, the message or narrative thread should drive your writing.
• Finalize the structure: Before you start writing the annual report, all stakeholders need to sign off on the structure, otherwise you’ll end up producing content that will be cut from the final draft.
• Prepare a clear brief: Avoid confusion about the scope of the project, roles and responsibilities by writing a clear brief for your annual report.
• Plan in advance: Writing your annual report is a long-term process that requires organization and project management skills, especially when you hire external contractors to take care of tasks such as design or printing.
• Language: Use simple sentences, active verbs, and keep jargon to a minimum. Avoid clichés, keep sentences and paragraphs short, and check your imagery: flowery language and metaphors make things vague, but if you use them, check that they’re in line with your brand.
• Write in drafts: Your annual report doesn’t have to be perfect from the beginning. Rather than trying to get it right in one go, work in three iterations. Your first draft is a rough sketch where you obtain clarity of which section goes where and how long each section will be, more or less. In the second draft, the coherent narrative takes shape. In the third draft, you clean up the writing before your have someone else check it.
• Changes: Employ a professional proofreader or editor to work through necessary changes cost-effectively and efficiently. Consider legal counsel for a compliance or regulation check.

Best Practises For Annual Report Writing

Annual report executive summary, annual report templates, smb: small and midsize business.

• Letter or statement from the CEO
• Executive Summary
• Highlights of the past year
• Company information
• Optional: Stories, photos, and charts that construct a relatable narrative for investors.
• Optional: Instead of targeting investors, a small business can address and inspire employees in a special section.
• Financials:
• Balance sheet: Listing the company's current financial condition including tangible and intangible assets, long-term liabilities of the business, and equity, the balance sheet is a snapshot of how the company is doing.
• Income statement: Details on revenue and expenses to highlight profits and losses.
• Cash flow statement: Here the focus is on liquidity generated and spent in the past year
• Audit : If necessary or appropriate, include an auditor's report on the company's financial situation. Such an audit can be done internally or externally.
• Optional: Notes, appendix and clarification of financial statements.
• Optional: Accounting policies.
• Optional: A disclaimer about your forecast of expenses and revenue.

Nonprofit Organization / Non-Governmental Organization

• Welcome letter or personal introduction: This is your opportunity to showcase your mission. Your supporters probably don’t think as much about your mission as you do, so repeating your mission statement throughout the report is acceptable. Demonstrate throughout the report how your organization embodies, pursues, and fulfills that statement.
• Summary of highlights: Select major accomplishments you want to showcase and keep it engaging, but concise to not lose the attention of your readers. Limit the number of highlights and make sure to be inclusive: ask different people in all parts of the organization for their personal picks. Ensure that the accomplishments in the summary are in line with your message and mission statement. If possible, find a theme (such as growth, support, hope, responsibility etc.) to unite the highlights. Clarity is key, so spell out how the highlights relate to the organization’s mission.
• Financial information
• Three stories of accomplishment:
• The big picture
• A personal touch
• Example of past impact shaping the future
• Donor list: Depending on your organization, you can list donors, funders, volunteers, partners, sponsors, or association members.
• Mission statement / vision statement
• Summary of highlights
• Overview of the charity: Here you can give a brief summary of the history and talk about the charity, the people and the supporters.
• Governance: This will include legal information about the exact type of charity and the structure and management. You can include a report by the chairperson or CEO and state the objectives and activities as outlined in the chart.
• Financials: This section can include:
• Treasurer’s report
• Auditor’s statement or report
• Financial statements
• Other optional sections:
• Acknowledgements
• Call for contributions / action
• Future outlook
• State the mission clearly and relate back to it when you outline and highlight the activities and achievementsState clearly the organization’s mission and relate the activities back to the mission throughout the report.
• The information about the governance and structure of the charity should also reflect the mission.
• Disclose the charity’s risks, issues and challenges in the context of the mission.
• Avoid splintering your annual report into many mini-reports by your charity’s committees, if they exist. You can make these smaller reports available individually on the charity’s website.
• Welcome letter or personal introduction: Words by a founding member, church body or pastor to address the audience and set the tone for the annual report.
• Mission statement: What are the objectives and activities of the church?
• Overview: The identity of the church and its members as well as the values and the calling of the church, followed by details on the structure, governance, and management
• Stories of accomplishment and the church's work, for example:
• The community
• The mission and outreach
• Charity work with a personal touch
• Statement of Financial Activities
• Charity Balance Sheet
• Cash Flow Statement
• Notes to financial statements
• Audit by committee or independent auditor
• Callout: In this section, you can list donors, funders, volunteers, partners, sponsors, or church members as well as provide a call to action, for example to donate, take part in church work, or become a member.

What Is An Annual Report?

What is the purpose of an annual report.

Financials: Statements and audits of the financials as well as financial performance and goals of a company can comprise the bulk content of an annual report. Projected and achieved revenue figures are part of this section. A company might also report expansion, growth, revenue increase plans, as well as a return-on-investment analysis or effectiveness study. A nonprofit organization might account for its spending, report donations and also project financial goals. Achievements: A year-in-review goes beyond financial numbers and annual reports often feature a mission statement and highlight past achievements, which could include research, investment in personnel of infrastructure, employee benefits, personal success stories, customer or user testimonials, or product launches. This section seeks to portray the company as an innovator and industry leader which attracts participation. Promotion: An annual report is an opportunity for marketing and public relations, either in a special section, or throughout the entire report. The goal is to attract new shareholders, excite existing investors, and raise brand awareness with the general public. Compliance: Companies produce annual reports even when they don’t have to because they want to benefit from the marketing and PR opportunities. Publicly traded companies and entities that fit certain other criteria have to file annual reports with the SEC, the US Securities and Exchange Commission. To avoid producing two different reports, these companies commonly produce one general report that meets the compliance standards. Pro Tip If your annual report has to meet certain compliance standards (such as the SEC Form 10-K for publicly traded companies), make the best use of your resources and only produce one report for your entire audience which includes the necessary information.

What Are Annual Report Formats?

Printed Annual Reports: Traditionally, an annual report is a glossy and high-end print product distributed to shareholders, regulators, members of the press, and figures selected for marketing and PR reasons. The production and distribution of a high-quality print product is also a cost factor that has to be figured into the overall budget. Electronic Annual Reports: The advantage of a print production is that companies and organizations can simply re-use the document and make their annual report available in electronic format, for example as a PDF download on their website. This version can also be distributed through email and other digital means. Interactive Online Annual Reports: With this format, readers can browse and view an annual report just like a website. Graphs and charts can be animated or interactive, and there is the possibility of embedding videos and other multimedia material. You can precisely track reach and engagement with digital online annual reports and brand and design the it just like the website of your company or organization. Pro Tip An online, interactive annual report is a cost-effective opportunity to use your reporting to drive engagement and get the best results from making your report available to a broad audience.

What To Include

Chairperson’s statement or letter: The CEO, the primary owner or the chairperson usually addresses readers with an introduction in the form of a letter or personal statement. This might highlight the most significant developments as snapshots, include brief details of company initiatives, and give a brief summary of the financials–sort of like a teaser of what’s to come. This part commonly also focuses on the challenges, achievements, and growth. Business profile: In this section, you can profile your company or organization with a mission statement, and details on the corporate office, the board, the team or the employees. You can highlight your products or services which are the main revenue drivers, provide an analysis of the market, the competition, or the risk factors, and profile both the investors or donors you have and the ones you are looking for. Financials: Regulation and compliance will largely dictate what to include in this section, but unlike in other sections of your annual report, there is no room for storytelling, embellishing, or flowery language. Transparency, accuracy, and thorough reporting are key here. The absolute numbers speak about the company’s performance to investors, shareholders and stakeholders, regulators, employees, and the general public. Readers will get a complete picture of the profit and loss of the past year, the revenue and its division into earnings retained, investment, and operational expenses, and the company’s shares. A typical sequence in this section could be: income statement, balance sheet, equity statement, cash flow statement, and shareholder information with earnings per share. Consolidated statements can be followed with longer, in-detail explanations of the financials. Auditor’s Report: An audit of the financial situation and the spending can be split into the reporting of an audit committee and the reporting of an independent auditor or auditing body. Some companies include the former in their business profile, and the latter as part of the financial statements. Other sections: Depending on your company, other sections can be a director’s report, accounting policies, general policies, stories, image material, and details about other activities not related to the business, such as corporate social and environmental responsibility reports.

Annual Report Writing

Produce a brief.

• Format of your finished annual report and specifications for a printed product, if necessary, such as size and quantity.
• Expectations for internal and external contributors. This includes length of requested texts, design standards, style questions, and timelines.
• Specifications for deliverables that define the schedule, data, and format for contributors.

Background information or mission statement Concepts and deliverables Timing / deadlines Objectives of the annual report Key messages of the annual report Short description of the brand, personality, and audience Writing, style, and design specifications Pro Tip Write the brief for your annual report before you or anyone starts work on the actual report. Compose a clear annual report brief to avoid conflict, because conflict often stems from misunderstanding or miscommunication. Clarity helps everyone fulfill their roles during production.

How To Write The Executive Summary

Who is your audience? This will help you decide what critical information readers need. Make the story you tell in your annual report resonate with them. What is the objective of the summary? It serves the function of summarizing, but in addition, what do you need the audience to understand? What reaction should they have, what action should they take? What is the outcome? The executive summary should also list conclusions or recommendations based on the past year on which you are reporting. What changes are necessary, what actions will the business take in the future? What are the benefits of the achievements, which improvement will the company reap from implemented solutions? Don't make the reader guess or work to find out about the future course of the company or organization. How will you impress? Of course your executive summary should be able to stand out and give all the important details even for those who decide to skip the rest of the report. But ideally, it is able to draw the audience in and make them read on. Don't inflate numbers, invent facts or dress up the truth, of course, but carefully consider how you shape your message and organize your summary.

Format For The Executive Summary

Order of appearance: Apart from opening lines, you’ll have to decide if your summary follows the exact structure of your report as laid out in the table of contents, or if you organize it differently and establish a varying level of importance. In both cases, you can use subheadings to introduce sections and use bullet points as well as enough space to make the summary visually appealing and accessible to scanning. Length: When your summary reaches a length of two pages or beyond, it arguably stops being a summary and becomes an outright introduction. Be brief but comprehensive. Do a sketch where you describe each necessary section in just one word, then elaborate to three words, then a whole sentence. Sometimes a flow or coherence is better for the executive summary than giving a complete overview of the annual report. Tone of voice: The executive summary is formal and not casual and should match your target audience in tone of voice. Yet it’s neither the time nor place to get into technical jargon, lengthy definitions, and presentation of information that is only accessible with background information, expertise, or in-depth knowledge of the subject matter. Avoid acronyms and data that couldn’T stand for itself.

Any changes to the report require at least a check if not an update of the executive summary to ensure information remains relevant and consistent. Organize the summary either matching the table of contents or in the order of importance. Check for jargon, technical terms, filler words, and superfluous acronyms. Use active voice and direct language. Sparsely present precise and factual data from the report as highlights. Check to remove redundant information, repetitions, clichés, buzzwords, unnecessary phrases, and mixed messages. Use bullet points, subheadings and tables where appropriate to structure information. Format for readability and leave enough space. Check to include the most relevant information but remove anything not supported by the full report from the executive summary. Changes to headlines or sections of the report need to be reflected in the summary. Edit for brevity. Use test readers to verify that the summary stands alone to support your objectives.

Checklist For Your Annual Report Executive Summary

• Your Company Info
• Your Elevator Pitch
• The Problem You Are Solving
• Your Solution
• Your Target Audience
• Your Competitive Analysis
• Your Financials: Budget
• Your Financials: Revenue
• Your Financials: Funding
• Your Financials: Pricing
• Your Corporate Strategy
• Your Support Plan
• Your Leadership And Team
• Your Partners Or Donors

Executive Summary Template

• High-impact business writing
• Effective email writing
• Bid, tender and sales-proposal writing
• Technical writing
• Writing for customer service

• Customer-service writing
• Effective report writing

Business report writing

How to write an outstanding annual report

Rosie sawicz.

10 minute read

Writing an annual report probably seems like a daunting task, with lots of requirements and rules. And if it’s a task on your to-do list, take heart that you’re not alone: many companies have to produce one at the end of each financial year.

Here’s the good news: an annual report doesn’t have to be a dry, boring list of numbers and corporate jargon. This document offers an excellent opportunity for a company to stand out from their competition.

With the right amount of thought, preparation and good-quality writing, your company’s annual report can (and should) represent what’s great about the place you work and the work you do.

So, where to start? Luckily, we’re here to help.  

What is an annual report?

An annual report describes a company’s performance over the previous financial year. It also provides a window into your company’s culture and brand, as well as the people who work there and why the business is special.

Essentially, the document should be a one-stop-shop showcase of the company’s performance and operations. Its core aim is to inform stakeholders and build their trust.

Many companies approach their annual report strategically, aiming to stand out from their competition and win over their target audiences with a compelling narrative. And many employ the latest in digital technology and graphic design to create reports that are innovative in both their design and content.

The information in the report should allow shareholders to assess the company, its current situation and its potential future. There are legal requirements for what should be included and many regulations on financial reporting. A UK-listed company’s report usually includes the following:

• A strategic report , which allows companies to tell their story. Officially, this section shows how the directors performed their duty to promote the company’s success that year. It should include information about a company’s strategy, objectives and business model.
• A corporate governance section , which explains how the company’s operations support the achievement of its objectives. This section includes a directors’ report, corporate governance report and committee reports.
• Financial statements , which include policies and implementation, amounts awarded to directors, and audited financial statements such as balance sheets, income statements and cash flow.

What are the rules?

There are frequent regulatory changes which affect the annual report, and it’s important that you understand the up-to-date requirements for an annual report at your particular company and location. Your company’s legal and accounting teams will be able to guide you on this.

Publicly listed companies in the UK must produce a report for their shareholders at the end of each financial year. There are various rules that must be followed around the content and distribution of a UK annual report, like mandatory sections to include and certain groups who must receive a copy.

These rules are determined by strategic report regulations and the UK corporate governance code, and you can find helpful information on this through the Financial Reporting Council .

Other types of companies and organisations outside of the UK may also have to produce annual reports, depending on their size, location, tax status and local laws, which can vary according to country or state.

Who writes the annual report?

Who writes a company’s annual report varies depending on lots of factors, including the size of the company. There are a few options and each requires planning and project management:

• Outsource: Some companies choose to outsource their annual reports to specialist agencies. In those cases, there’ll often be an in-house project manager to coordinate with the internal teams who’ll be providing the core material, such as the secretarial, finance, legal and investor relations teams.
• Teamwork: Many companies have their own in-house writing and design team(s) who would likely take a big role in content writing. For the more specialist aspects of the report’s content, annual reports are often a team effort. Experts from across a company will provide their unique insights for things like notes on the accounts and the vision for the company’s future.
• One person: In some smaller companies, one person might collate and draft all the content before presenting it to their stakeholders for review.

  The UK also has laws which cover the content sign-off process after the report’s content is finished. As noted in section 414(1) of the Companies Act 2006 , ‘[a] company’s annual accounts must be approved by the board of directors and signed on behalf of the board by a director of the company.’

No matter how your company approaches the writing process and how many individuals contribute content, do your best to end up with a unified style and voice.

This will probably mean ensuring that your company has an up-to-date and comprehensive style and tone of voice guide , an eagle-eyed proofreader , and an agreed approach to creating clear, accessible writing throughout.

How to prepare

An annual report can be a huge, complex document which requires input from a wide range of people. Work begins long before the content-gathering phase; often it’s something you’ll be thinking about all year round. Preparation is crucial to do your best work and ensure a well-rounded document.

Overview of the process

To help kick off your planning, here’s a high-level look at the steps you’ll need to follow to create the annual report:

• Work out your timeline and plan content
• Establish your structure and make a page plan
• Write a list of contributors and gather content
• Write and collate
• Check the draft and send for review
• Allow for multiple rounds of feedback
• Finalise content and send for design
• Proofread and check everything
• Get sign-off from the board of directors

  And here are some further things you’ll want to do in advance:

Consider imagery: Another element to think about well ahead of writing the report is photography.

Work closely with your communications and/or marketing teams to ensure that the annual report is considered all year round. This can mean something like ensuring that significant events are photographed and the images are collated with information for captions. This will make your life much easier in annual report season.

Assess your competition: Look at what your competitors are doing and find examples of excellent annual reports. This will provide inspiration and enable you to help your company stand out from the competition.

Know your audience: Keeping the audience in mind is a big step in how to make your annual report interesting . Your demographic will depend on the work your company does.

Although an annual report is primarily aimed at existing shareholders, it’s also a useful way to attract new investors, advertise the company’s products or services, and even entice future employees. While you’re preparing and writing your annual report, make sure you focus on the needs of these audiences .

If your company has an international audience, you might want to consider translation into other languages, and printing and distribution to the relevant markets.

Writing the report

Since there are strict regulations around the financial and corporate governance sections, the bulk of your more creative writing work will be in the strategic report . So that’s what we’ll focus on here.

The strategic report reflects the board’s view of the company to the shareholders and provides context for the financial details elsewhere in the annual report. The writing here should be clear, concise, in plain English and presented without bias. The general tone should be forward-looking and in line with your company’s voice.

There are no specific rules on the structure of a strategic report, as it should reflect the company and the content of the report itself. Each company’s requirements may differ depending on size, type and location. However, many companies take an approach like this:  

1. Opening statements

An annual report may open with a chairperson’s and/or CEO’s statement. These are written in the voice of the individual (and may be ghostwritten for them) and are often accompanied by a professional photograph of that person.

The written content addresses the shareholders and provides a summary of the details to come: significant headlines from the past year, a brief overview of the financials, challenges and successes, and potential future growth.

Although this section comes at the beginning, you might find it easiest to write it last. By that point, you will have gathered all the strategic report content and can summarise it into the introductory letter. If you’re writing in another person’s voice, it’s doubly important to get their sign-off.

2. Business overview

This section explains what your company does and is key to showcasing the company – your opportunity to tell your company’s story . It should contain an overview of the company, including its vision, culture and mission statement. It should also include information on the company’s:

• products or services
• business model
• directors (details on them and their duties)
• investor profiles
• competitors
• non-financial key performance indicators
• potential risk factors.

And it’s a great idea to include case studies and any highlights from the year here.

This is the section which will hopefully be the easiest to collate and update, as it’s information that should be available in your website, brochures, reports and other public-facing materials.

3. Financial review

The financial section presents a comprehensive analysis of the business’s performance over the financial year and its position at the close. It should refer to and explain the figures included in the financial statements.

This section will be an important focus for your stakeholders, so clarity and honesty are very important. Make sure all data is backed up with sources. And be sure to communicate a strong understanding of your company’s strategy and key performance indicators, and find ways to present data in engaging, visual ways, paired with impactful quotes.

4. Disclosures

There are frequent emerging trends in corporate disclosure. These may come from changes in regulations or simply in the expectations of readers. (And, as before, even actual rules may apply only to certain types or sizes of companies.) What goes into a strategic report will also need to shift to align with these wider changes.

It’s a good idea to investigate and include any newly emerged focus areas in corporate reporting, such as:

• sustainability
• anti-corruption
• anti-bribery
• environmental impact
• gender diversity of employees and directors
• social and community issues
• human rights issues.

Finally, finish with a strong call to action: what do you want your audience to do when they finish reading this report? Consider your audience again, and whether you want them to invest, apply, donate … anything!

Common challenges with writing annual reports

As we’ve noted, writing an annual report can be daunting. It’s a large document with lots of rules and regulations behind it, and it can have a big impact on the future of the company and its shareholders.

Here are some common challenges and how to tackle them:

• Multiple contributors: working with large numbers of contributors is tricky, and it’s important to put your project management hat on. Make sure you identify and alert your contributors ahead of time, issue clear briefs and deadlines, and ensure a consistent style despite lots of authors.
• Version control: multiple authors and rounds of feedback mean multiple versions of the document. It’s important that one person keeps a tight oversight on version control to ensure no work is lost and nothing slips through the net.
• Lots of rules and regulations: this one can be intimidating, especially when you’re faced with technical jargon or even actual laws instead of a simple search result to answer your question. Don’t be afraid to ask the experts: your company’s legal team are there to help.
• Lack of planning: As we’ve said, preparation is key to success. If this year was a bit of a rush or mistakes were made, make sure you debrief and learn from what happened, so you don’t repeat the same problems next year. And if in doubt, start early!

Creating a stand-out annual report

Although some annual reports can be dry documents full of financial tables, yours doesn’t have to be.

Remember this is an opportunity to show shareholders and future colleagues why you care about the work your company does.

Good preparation is your greatest ally here. Beyond that, you’ll need to enlist the help of colleagues across your company, maintain your in-house style and engage your creativity. That way, you can ensure your company’s annual report stands out from the crowd, with excellent writing from start to finish.  

We’ve helped both individuals and teams with their annual reports through our one-to-one coaching and in-company training . If you’d like our help with writing your own, just get in touch .  

Image credit: SvetaZiO / Shutterstock

Your go-to guide to better writing

Get your own PDF copy of The Write Stuff , the definitive guide for everyone who writes at work.

Rosie is a writer and editor who has worked in corporate communications in a variety of environments, from national libraries and global aviation services to international law firms and renowned research projects. She specialises in facilitating internal comms and in her career has ensured organisations communicate effectively across networks of over 32,000 employees in 34 countries. Rosie is also a published novelist: she writes psychological thrillers under her pen name Rosie Walker . She also provides editorial services (developmental editing, copy editing and proofreading) to fellow authors.

Was this article helpful?

This helps us make better content for you

You might also like

Can you use the first person pronouns ‘I’ and ‘we’ in a report?

Business writing essentials

Plan and research your documents with mind maps

See into your reader’s mind with ChatGPT

Writing corporate communications

A practical guide to creating brand tone of voice guidelines (that people will actually use)

Get expert advice, how-tos and resources for good writing (and great work).

• Google Slides Presentation Design
• Pitch Deck Design
• Powerpoint Redesign
• Other Design Services

• Business Slides
• Design Tips
• Guide & How to's

Annual report design templates and tips: how to tell a great story with financial data in 2023

A memorable annual report needs a lot of time and effort. Do you recall the school report card and its purpose? It served as a reflection. It showed our academic performance during the year. Similarly, a company’s or organization’s performance report has to communicate this. It has to stand out in a clear, easy-to-understand annual report presentation of the company’s values, key business highlights, financial performance, revenue growth goals, and future developments.

Of course, we know how difficult and daunting listing, summarizing, and recording business operations and financial positions can be. That’s why we’ve created an ultimate guide with tips for writing an annual report. So, let’s dive in…

How to write an annual report

The secret to an excellent annual report is simple: just turn the information you include in the presentation into an engaging story utilizing all the available storytelling techniques. From writing content to designing, the tips on how to create an annual report you’ll find in this article will help you increase visibility and bring your annual report game to the next level.

Important steps to take:

Step 1: Decide on the key message

Highlighting your achievements and their impact in an annual report is a great idea. The target audience is interested in learning what you have accomplished so far and why you did it.

In fact, businesses can build credibility and establish lasting relationships with shareholders, investors, and customers by tying their activities and achievements to their mission statements.

Step 2: Structure the report

Choosing what to include and what to omit while creating a yearly report is one of the most challenging aspects of the process. It’s critical to plan the annual report structure and content.

The annual report should include a storyline that establishes the overall framework of the document and organizes the content around a narrative thread, in addition to the fundamental components like the introduction, chairperson’s letter, business profile, and financial statement. This makes it simpler to spot and remove content that does not advance the plot.

Write with clarity, precision, and unambiguity. Keep your tone impartial and professional throughout the entire document.

The annual report’s content must be transparent and truthful, so don’t exaggerate achievements or hide your losses.

Once the writing is done, proofread it for grammar, tone, and spelling.

Step 3: Use a captivating design

A business can utilize a well-designed report as a marketing tool if it is exciting and professional. That’s why readers should be able to scan the document to find the information they require quickly.

Here are some guidelines for an effective annual report design:

• Utilize headers and subheadings.
• Allow room for images, infographics, and other visuals.
• Keep the text brief and simple.
• Use a color palette and fonts that are consistent with your brand.
• Emphasize important areas using colored text bubbles, quotations, and captions.

Pro tip: Prepare in advance

Creating an annual report is a lengthy process requiring an orderly system for logging and tracking information, media clippings, images, and corporate accomplishments. Many businesses craft their annual reports in-house, while others prefer to employ a design agency to ensure their report is structured and designed in a professional way.

What’s included in an annual report?

An annual report is a financial document comprised of four sections covering the critical company’s aspects and appendages. The sections are as follows:

1. Management’s message

Management has a fantastic opportunity to interact with the company’s stakeholders through an annual report. Almost all yearly reports begin with a message from the company’s chairman, primary owner, or CEO, which provides an overview of the company’s challenges, successes, and insights into the growth during the previous year.

Next comes the table of contents.

2. Company profile

The company’s vision and mission statement, information on the directors, officers, registered and corporate offices, investor profiles, the products or services that the company offers, competitor profiles, and risk factors for the company are all included here.

This section can be decorated with team photos and staff testimonials.

3. Management discussion and analysis

The section gives a detailed summary of the company’s three-year performance and includes information about the following:

• Revenue growth
• Changes from past reports
• Profit margins
• Cash flow statement

New product launches, shifts in sales, and marketing can also be covered in this section. The other topics to include are new hires, company acquisitions, and other beneficial information.

4. Financial statements

The financial statements are the most crucial section of the annual report because they show how well the business has performed in the past, its capability to pay off debts, and its future growth plans. The following statements are included:

• Balance sheet
• Current stock prices
• Income statement
• Statement to shareholders
• Comparison as per financial trends (current vs. previous years)
• Grants distributed

The income statement lists the company’s earnings, expenses, and total sales. The balance sheet provides a quick overview of the company’s assets and liabilities. The cash flow statement contains data on cash inflows and outflows.

Additional notes are given regarding each financial component after the financial data. The balance sheet notes include information on capitalized leases and debt insurance. Notes to the cash flow statement usually cover tax payments.

In addition to the financial statements, data about the dividends paid can also be covered in this section.

Other elements to include are as follows:

• Account notes with accounting policy details
• Auditor’s comments on the company’s financials
• Forecasted income and expense disclaimers
• Infographics, photos, and success stories

Now that you know how to write an annual report and its main components, let’s move on to tips on designing an annual report.

Corporate annual report design best practices

1. create a visual hierarchy.

As soon as you get through the content writing phase, you need to consider how you will present the content. Even though chunks of text are unavoidable, given the nature of an annual report, you can separate them with the layout to improve comprehension.

Pro tip: Break up content with white spaces

While the annual report’s design direction prioritizes a minimalist approach, you can employ the same style on specific pages where written content can be condensed and fit inside your visual hierarchy.

2. Choose the right typography

Next, you need to select the appropriate typography based on the report’s context. Despite how insignificant it may seem, the font can have an impact on the readability, design, and even the readers’ mood.

Here’s an example:

Pro tip: Look at the design of your company annual report PowerPoint presentation. Does it evoke positive emotions? If not, it’s time to change the font.

3. Give section breaks

Before each part, give an overview with critical points and stats (using visuals, of course). Not everyone has the time to go through a lengthy report, and most people only skim through them.

By providing a summary, you make sure that people remember your message.

Pro tip: Remember, less is more. Try to condense data to the essentials, not overcrowd slides, as they will look busy and be difficult to read.

4. Add status marks to lists

The use of a consistent icon set can help express the achievement of goals in the most appealing way.

5. Pay special attention to visuals

The visuals you use to communicate your story and present your financial data are just as important as the written words. Similarly to fonts, your choice of infographics, images, and colors will impact how the reader interprets the content.

Some good examples to follow:

Pro tip: Make sure the design of your annual report ppt is in line with your brand and reflects your visual identity.

6. Replace table content with text in shapes

A PowerPoint shape can help make tables look better and easier to edit as you create annual report.

7. Be creative

Experiment with layout, include delightful photos or tidbits, and don’t be shy to move past traditional design boundaries to make your annual report truly memorable.

Some awesome examples to follow:

• Warby Parker’s 2013 annual report
• Flywheel’s 2015 Year in Review

Wrapping up

While that’s quite a lot of information to keep in mind, these content writing and annual report design tips can serve as a reference for you anytime you run into problems with your report’s creation, so don’t hesitate to bookmark this page.

And if you need help bringing your story to life, our creative team will gladly handle it for you. Simply drop us a message or call +1 (347) 464 59 57.

#ezw_tco-2 .ez-toc-widget-container ul.ez-toc-list li.active::before { background-color: #ededed; } Table of contents

Presenting techniques.

• 50 tips on how to improve PowerPoint presentations in 2022-2023 [Updated]
• Keynote VS PowerPoint
• Types of presentations
• Present financial information visually in PowerPoint to drive results

How to start and end a presentation: top tips and tricks from professionals (+ special focus)

How to create weekly status report template

• Search Search Please fill out this field.

What Is an Annual Report?

Understanding annual reports, special considerations, mutual fund annual reports, the bottom line.

• Corporate Finance
• Financial statements: Balance, income, cash flow, and equity

Annual Report Explained: How to Read and Write Them

Adam Hayes, Ph.D., CFA, is a financial writer with 15+ years Wall Street experience as a derivatives trader. Besides his extensive derivative trading expertise, Adam is an expert in economics and behavioral finance. Adam received his master's in economics from The New School for Social Research and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in sociology. He is a CFA charterholder as well as holding FINRA Series 7, 55 & 63 licenses. He currently researches and teaches economic sociology and the social studies of finance at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

An annual report is a document that public corporations must provide annually to shareholders that describes their operations and financial conditions. The front part of the report often contains an impressive combination of graphics, photos, and an accompanying narrative, all of which chronicle the company's activities over the past year and may also make forecasts about the future of the company. The back part of the report contains detailed financial and operational information.

Key Takeaways

• An annual report is a corporate document disseminated to shareholders that spells out the company's financial condition and operations over the previous year.
• It was not until legislation was enacted after the stock market crash of 1929 that the annual report became a regular component of corporate financial reporting.
• Registered mutual funds must also distribute a full annual report to their shareholders each year.

Investopedia / Jake Shi

Annual reports became a regulatory requirement for public companies following the stock market crash of 1929 when lawmakers mandated standardized corporate financial reporting. The intent of the required annual report is to provide public disclosure of a company's operating and financial activities over the past year. The report is typically issued to shareholders and other stakeholders who use it to evaluate the firm's financial performance and to make investment decisions.

Typically, an annual report will contain the following sections:

• General corporate information
• Operating and financial highlights
• Letter to the shareholders from the CEO
• Narrative text, graphics, and photos
• Management's discussion and analysis (MD&A)
• Financial statements, including the balance sheet, income statement, and cash flow statement
• Notes to the financial statements
• Auditor's report
• Summary of financial data
• Accounting policies

Current and prospective investors, employees, creditors, analysts, and any other interested party will analyze a company using its annual report.

In the U.S., a more detailed version of the annual report is referred to as Form 10-K  and is submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Companies may submit their annual reports electronically through the SEC's EDGAR database . Reporting companies must send annual reports to their shareholders when they hold annual meetings to elect directors. Under the proxy rules, reporting companies are required to post their proxy materials, including their annual reports, on their company websites.

The annual report contains key information on a company's financial position that can be used to measure:

• A company's ability to pay its debts as they come due
• Whether a company made a profit or loss in its previous fiscal year
• A company's growth over a number of years
• How much of earnings are retained by a company to grow its operations
• The proportion of operational expenses to revenue generated

The annual report also determines whether the information conforms to the generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). This confirmation will be highlighted as an " unqualified opinion " in the auditor's report section.

Fundamental analysts also attempt to understand a company's future direction by analyzing the details provided in its annual report.

In the case of mutual funds, the annual report is a required document that is made available to a fund's shareholders on a fiscal-year basis. It discloses certain aspects of a mutual fund's operations and financial condition. In contrast to corporate annual reports, mutual fund annual reports are best described as "plain vanilla" in terms of their presentation.

A mutual fund annual report, along with a fund's prospectus and statement of additional information, is a source of multi-year fund data and performance, which is made available to fund shareholders as well as to prospective fund investors. Unfortunately, most of the information is quantitative rather than qualitative, which addresses the mandatory accounting disclosures required of mutual funds.

All mutual funds that are registered with the SEC are required to send a full report to all shareholders every year. The report shows how well the fund fared over the fiscal year. Information that can be found in the annual report includes:

• Table, chart, or graph of holdings by category (e.g., type of security, industry sector, geographic region, credit quality, or maturity)
• Audited financial statements, including a complete or summary (top 50) list of holdings
• Condensed financial statements
• Table showing the fund’s returns for one-, five- and 10-year periods
• Management’s discussion of fund performance
• Management information about directors and officers, such as name, age, and tenure
• Remuneration or compensation paid to directors, officers, and others

How Do You Write an Annual Report?

An annual report has a few sections and steps that must convey a certain amount of information, much of which is legally required for public companies. Most public companies hire auditing companies to write their annual reports. An annual report begins with a letter to the shareholders, then a brief description of the business and industry. Following that, the report should include the audited financial statements: balance sheet, income statement, and statement of cash flows. The last part will typically be notes to the financial statements, explaining certain facts and figures.

Is an Annual Report the Same As a 10-K Filing?

In general, an annual report is similar to the 10-K filing in that both report on the company's performance for the year. Both are considered to be the last financial filing of the year and summarize how the company did for that period. Annual reports are much more visually friendly. They are designed well and contain images and graphics. The 10-K filing only reports numbers and other qualitative information without any design elements or additional flair.

What Is a 10-Q Filing?

A 10-Q filing is a form that is filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that reports the quarterly earnings of a company. Most public companies have to file a 10-Q with the SEC to report their financial position for the quarter.

Public companies must produce annual reports to show their current financial conditions and operations. Annual reports can be used to examine a company's financial position and, possibly, understand what direction it will move in the future. These reports function differently for mutual funds; in this case, they are made available each fiscal year and are typically simpler.

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. " Speech By SEC Commissioner: Remarks Before the Securities Traders Association ."

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. " Annual Report ."

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. " How to Read a 10-K/10-Q ."

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. " Final Rule: Shareholder Reports and Quarterly Portfolio Disclosure of Registered Management Investment Companies ."

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. " Mutual Funds - The Next 75 Years ."

• Terms of Service
• Editorial Policy
• Privacy Policy
• Your Privacy Choices

Blog >> How to Write An Annual Report (Plus Annual Report Template)

How to Write An Annual Report (Plus Annual Report Template)

Are you responsible for creating your company’s annual report—but don’t know where to start? Are you having trouble telling a consistent story that gives shareholders, customers, and other key stakeholders a comprehensive overview of your company’s big wins of the year? We’re here to help.

Annual Report Definition

An annual report describes your company’s previous year’s performance, operations, and financial well-being. Interestingly, it is becoming increasingly more important to weave a consistent narrative throughout your annual report—from the opening letter, to the financial overview, to future projections.

In fact, a Deloitte study of one hundred different Financial Times Stock Exchange companies found that the average annual report was 43% narrative and 57% financial statements twenty years ago. Now?

“Narrative now makes up 61% of the average report included in the Deloitte study” ( Financial Management ).”

This is because experts and non-experts alike are moved by authentic, true, creative, and compelling stories. At Untold, we specialize in clarifying the complicated, crafting content that builds your brand, and translating your insights to activate key stakeholders.

We have worked closely with innovative organizations to create annual reports that capture their operational and financial year at-a-glance in a way that energizes stakeholders and customers about the bigger picture.

Today, we are sharing annual report writing insights and design guidance (below)!

Annual Report Template

This article will cover:

• Who needs an annual report
• Three steps to nail your narrative
• Annual report design

Who Needs an Annual Report?

Public corporations are required to prepare an annual report for shareholders, while nonprofits and small businesses use annual reports more for customers, financial analysts, and/or potential investors. 

3 Steps to Nail Your Annual Report Narrative

Compelling, story-driven content is a crucial part of an annual report. This is because the brain is wired to remember stories—not facts and figures! Create a lasting impression for your brand with the following tips to nail your narrative. 

1. First, determine the story you want to tell. Start by asking yourself questions.

What significant milestones happened for the company this past year? What was one client or customer experience that exceeded expectations? 

2. Next, decide what story will resonate most with your audience. 

We love this advice from Column Five Media :  “Sometimes your strongest story will come from the numbers in your spreadsheets.” 

Once you brainstorm some great stories to demonstrate the preceding year, center your narrative around your most impressive data point.  

3. Lastly, weave in the narrative throughout the report with imagery, graphics, other data visualizations, and consistent messaging. No pressure.

Many professionals responsible for managing and reporting data-driven insights struggle to deliver those insights in clear, engaging, and actionable ways. Unsure how to transform data into powerful visual narratives that drive action? Check out our self-paced Data Storytelling Training !

Annual Report Design

Annual reports are quite comprehensive and can run anywhere from 5 to 180 pages, depending on organizational size. They’re also highly visual, particularly when it comes to the financial section. 

Generally, these are the 7 must-have pages:

• Table of content
• Note From CEO, Chief Operating Officer, or Director
• Executive Summary
• Financial Overview
• Project Overview
• Projections

Looking for a professionally-designed annual report template? Our team of expert writers, researchers, and designers collaborated to create fully-customizable  Annual Report Templates .

The best part? Both unique templates feature step-by-step writing guidance. So, not only will you achieve a sleek, modern look, but you’ll nail the narrative and won’t miss any important information. 

Related Content

Untold Announces Launch of Narratize, an AI-Powered Storytelling Platform

Untold announced the launch of Narratize, an AI-powered storytelling platform that drives innovation success by effectively and efficiently transforming scientific, technical, and medical insights into compelling stories. Narratize was created to help busy innovators to connect, communicate, and innovate through the power of story.

Nailing Your Message-Market Fit

Find your message-market fit to ensure that even in a sea of content, you stand out with validated claims and evidence-based insights.

3 Tips for Building a Strong Innovation Pitch

Based on our research and work helping innovators build their pitch narratives, here are our 3 Tips for Building a Strong Inovation pitch.

Innovation Storytelling Framework: The Hero’s Journey

The Hero’s Journey story framework details a journey that transforms the main character and the world they impact. See how it’s used in innovation.

View our offerings

Meet our team.

[email protected]

(859) 866-1916

© 2020 Untold. All right reserved.

Privacy Policy          Terms of Service

• Why Kindful? Mission Testimonials Comparisons
• Features Fundraising Tools Donor Communications Donor Management Tracking & Reporting View All Features
• Apps & Integrations
• Resources Blog Webinars Kindful Academy eBooks Templates Year-End Giving Nonprofit Glossary Consultant Directory
• Year-End Giving
• Other Resources Academy eBooks Templates Webinars
• Nonprofit Glossary
• Join the Newsletter

Communication

Step-by-Step Guide To Writing An Annual Report For Small & Growing Nonprofits

Kindful • April 19, 2021

Writing an annual report is an important component of doing business as a nonprofit organization. When it is well written and visually pleasing, it can inspire potential donors to jump on board and donate money, initiate major gifts from corporations and foundations, and ensure that those who already donate to your organization keep on giving.

Whether you are new to writing annual reports or would like to improve the reports you already send out each year, we have created a step-by-step guide to help you write an annual report that is full of inspiration and a vision for the future.

• Brainstorm and create an outline
• Compile all of the information for your annual report
• Lay out your annual report so that it’s visually appealing
• Review and edit your annual report
• Distribute your annual report

1. Brainstorm and create an outline.

Before diving in and actually getting to work on writing your organization’s annual report, brainstorm and create an outline so that you and your team can organize all of your thoughts and ideas. Annual reports are packed full of information, and you want to ensure that all of the information flows in a pleasing and logical manner for the reader.

Your annual report should educate potential new donors to give money to your organization for the first time as well as inspire established donors to give more. When creating your outline, be sure to include plenty of feel-good success stories as well as a detailed explanation on how donations benefit the community you’re serving. Your annual report should be full of colorful pictures and pleasing graphics to hold the attention of the reader.

2. Compile all of the information for your annual report.

Now that you have brainstormed and created a basic outline of what to include on your annual report, it’s time to compile all of the data and graphics to include in the document. Gather information about your financials, what projects and initiatives their donations funded, how many people in the community were served, and what the goals and objectives are for the future.

Within your annual report, you should also include data and statistics about specific fundraising events and campaigns, highlighting how successful they were. Also, be sure to include personal stories from community members your nonprofit served.

3. Lay out your annual report so that it is visually appealing.

If your nonprofit doesn’t have a well-established public relations and marketing department with designers who can create a template for you, there are many templates you can download online for free or for a nominal fee. An annual report does not need to be book-length, but should at least contain a few pages, so you have enough space to include all of the pertinent information. Brochures and booklet size publications are ideal for annual reports.

Create a captivating cover page for your annual report so that everyone on your report’s distribution list has a clear understanding of what you are sending them. The first page of the report should be reserved for a letter by the CEO of your organization to donors and community members discussing the achievements, challenges, and visions for the future. The following pages should contain the “meat” of your annual report, which includes photos, stories, statistics, and graphs.

4. Review and edit your annual report.

After drafting your annual report, be sure to look it over with a fine-tooth-comb to ensure all of the data, information, and statistics are accurate. Consider assigning the editing task to someone on your team who did not help write the report for a fresh perspective. The drafted report should also be reviewed by the leadership executives of your nonprofit for approval before the report is distributed to stakeholders and the community. Once the editing process is complete, you can fine-tune the layout and get the report ready for final copy.

5. Distribute your annual report.

The final step of creating your organization’s annual report is to distribute it to your community. You can use your nonprofit’s CRM database to make this an easy and efficient task. First, determine who you are going to directly send the report to, whether it be corporate and major gift donors, donors who contribute “X” amount or more to your organization each year, or if you are going to send it to the entire community.

Distribute your annual report in a multitude of different ways, including by way of email, posting it to your organization’s website, and sending copies via direct mail. Use the bulk email function within your CRM software to send out electronic copies of the report.

Where can I find annual report templates and examples?

You can find plenty of templates and examples online that will help guide you through the process of writing an engaging annual report. For example, the Council of Nonprofits has an entire library of resources and templates to assist you with many topics regarding nonprofit business management.

An annual report is an essential business tool of any nonprofit, and it helps paint a picture of the mission of your organization. Not only does the annual report highlight how donor dollars were utilized throughout the year, but it also showcases your organization’s vision for the future. When done well, it can inspire community members to donate more and help you grow and create more of an impact well into the future.

Schedule a live demo with our partner Bloomerang, and we’ll show you how easy it is to create and automate reports, utilize online and offline fundraising tools, quickly integrate and access all your data, and ultimately create more time to engage your donors.

Filed Under:    Communication

• Corporate Comms & IR
• Studios by IDX
• Content & Creative
• Managed Services
• Social Media
• Email Marketing
• Conversion Rate Optimization
• Connect.ID Platform
• Connect.ID Intelligence
• Connect.ID Tools & Feeds
• On-air by IDX
• Culture & Values

• How to Create an Effective Annual Report Summary
• Investor Relations

Annual reports are both an important and essential way for any publicly traded firm to communicate with investors and meet the needs of regulators . 

But annual reports are also labor-intensive undertakings. It can be a struggle for businesses to convey their key messages prominently amid the financial data that they need to report. But with a bit of resourcefulness and strategic thinking, enterprises can find creative ways to amplify their most important content from their annual reports. One example: the publication of the annual report summary. 

An annual report summary is what it sounds like: a summation of the key data in an annual report outside the confines of the report itself. Done right, an annual report summary also attracts an audience to the annual report itself by sharing key insights that invite further exploration. 

What should be in your digital annual report summary?  

Based on our experience working with several clients on annual reports and summaries, we advise most companies to provide the digital report content as a summary of the year — a year in review — taking elements of the front section of the report and giving an overview to visitors.  

Here's what an effective Year in Review should have: 

• Headline sections from the full annual report . Your Year in Review should be like a shop window of highlights into the full annual report. 
• An (easily) updatable site framework . Pick a framework that works year after year and that can be easily updated when needed. 
• A Chairman’s statement and strategy content . Showcase your company’s leadership and goals with compelling multimedia. 

For example, we worked with our client Pearson to publish a digital summary of its 2021 annual report. 

The summary highlights some core themes of the company’s annual report via several web pages.

Readers can click on the pages for more insight.  

Because those themes are central to Pearson’s narrative, the pages have persisted long after the publication of the report without requiring updates.  

What’s the scope of these summaries?  

• Most summaries are one page. But one-pagers can still be long, so in-page navigation is typically added. 
• Others create a section with separate pages . See the Pearson example (above) for this style. 
• Multimedia will also affect your scope . The number of illustrations, charts or custom-made videos that need to be created – or other functionality such as interactive maps or report building – which enables the visitor to create a bespoke version of the Annual Report and download it will determine the complete scope of your project. 

Where should your annual report summary be published?  

We recommend that the annual report summary content is integrated into the Investor Relations section on your corporate website and not created as a microsite. 

The reasons for this include:  

• Maximizing the longevity of your site traffic . Microsites of Annual Report content attract large spikes of visitors around the launch of the Report, just after Results Day. However, this quickly tails off leaving few or no visitors after that. If the content is part of the main site – the number of visitors remains constantly much higher. 
• Search engines will have assigned authority to your site and its domain . Creating a new site with a new domain will lead to reduced search engine traffic as the new address or domain will have less authority. The bottom line is that results from this new domain will always appear lower on the search results pages – than results from the main corporate domain 
• A new version of the same digital summary can be created every year . And each previous year be moved into an archive. This is something that visitors and search engines alike will find easy to access. 

We’ve used this approach with numerous clients, including Anglo American . 

What kind of features and functionality should your summary include?  

Annual report summaries can be as sophisticated as you would like them to be. That said, we recommend treating them seriously as an essential expression of your brand. The summary creates an all-important first impression. This means planning them seriously with an appropriate scope.  

Following are some variables that affect scope (beyond the normal costs of designing and building the summary): 

• Illustrations, infographics – animated or static. 
• Advanced KPI illustrations and/or animation (see this example from BT in their Annual Review ). 
• Interactive operations or project maps – see SNC Lavalin example (very simple version). 
• Video editing and production – this would normally be done at the time of the Annual Report design and production 

Contact IDX

We have extensive experience of working closely with Annual Report design and print agencies as part of our investor relations work . Contact us to learn more. 

Share this article

👀 Turn any prompt into captivating visuals in seconds with our AI-powered visual tool ✨ Try Piktochart AI!

• Piktochart Visual
• Video Editor
• Infographic Maker
• Banner Maker
• Brochure Maker
• Diagram Maker
• Flowchart Maker
• Flyer Maker
• Graph Maker
• Invitation Maker
• Pitch Deck Creator
• Poster Maker
• Presentation Maker
• Report Maker
• Resume Maker
• Social Media Graphic Maker
• Timeline Maker
• Venn Diagram Maker
• Screen Recorder
• Social Media Video Maker
• Video Cropper
• Video to Text Converter
• Video Views Calculator
• AI Flyer Generator
• AI Infographic
• AI Instagram Post Generator
• AI Newsletter Generator
• AI Report Generator
• AI Timeline Generator
• For Communications
• For Education
• For eLearning
• For Financial Services
• For Healthcare
• For Human Resources
• For Marketing
• For Nonprofits
• Brochure Templates
• Flyer Templates
• Infographic Templates
• Newsletter Templates
• Presentation Templates
• Resume Templates
• Business Infographics
• Business Proposals
• Education Templates
• Health Posters
• HR Templates
• Sales Presentations
• Community Template
• Explore all free templates on Piktochart
• The Business Storyteller Podcast
• User Stories
• Video Tutorials
• Visual Academy
• Need help? Check out our Help Center
• Earn money as a Piktochart Affiliate Partner
• Compare prices and features across Free, Pro, and Enterprise plans.
• For professionals and small teams looking for better brand management.
• For organizations seeking enterprise-grade onboarding, support, and SSO.
• Discounted plan for students, teachers, and education staff.
• Great causes deserve great pricing. Registered nonprofits pay less.

Communications

How to Create an Annual Report in 2024

Annual reports help you summarize and review your company’s performance at the end of a financial year. If you’re a publicly traded company, you’re required by law to publish one. Many smaller reporting companies also have directors who choose to prepare an annual report detailing their company’s activities even though there’s no legal obligation to do so.

That’s because annual reports are useful for sharing a more detailed version of your achievements and challenges internally with other directors and shareholders. Externally, they are useful for current and potential investors, employees, the public, the media, and anyone interested in your business entity and operations.

Besides officially describing the company’s financial position, operations, and recent company activities, annual reports are a great way to document and communicate your brand identity. Internally, they help you assess the situation and plan for the future.

In this 2024 guide, we’ll show you how to create an annual report that checks all the boxes and provides a suitable showcase for your company.

How to create a successful annual report

While it’s important to know the basics of how to create annual reports and what must be included, the document can and should be more than bare bones. If you can make your annual reports more engaging, they will inspire investors and make employees proud to work for your company.

Successful annual reports also serve as a marketing tool for most public companies, showing potential customers that the companies are doing well and committed to further improvement. Because annual reports are shared with a diverse group of people by reporting companies, they must be accessible and narrative-driven with plenty of visuals.

Annual reports’ exact form and content will depend on the type and size of reporting companies, their services, and their turnover. But it’s essential that you create a clear, well-written document that can be easily understood by everyone from directors to shareholders. This will also help if you must deliver a presentation during annual meetings or send it to relevant parties.

Annual reports need an impactful cover page and a table of contents to help people navigate them. They often begin with a letter from the chairperson, directors, owner, or CEO to your shareholders.

Now that we’ve covered the basics of creating an annual report, here are some other tips to elevate them.

Summarize your business profile

The people reading your report need some background information about your operations and the company as a whole. This summary will be a recap for existing stakeholders, but it also acts as an introduction for those who need to learn more about the company and its services.

As a starter, outline the vision and mission statement of your company. Then, add a corporate governance section detailing your directors, officers, and key staff members, such as department heads and team leaders. List the addresses of your registered and corporate operations, and profile your current investors. 

Remember to include basic information like your phone number and your entity’s current email address here.

In addition, briefly describe your products and services, including those that generate the most revenue and profit, to showcase your company’s financial performance. Some general detail about your company’s activities and industry is also helpful, as well as a profile of your business entity and main competitors.

Bonus tip: Mention opportunities and risk factors in the year ahead, as such details will enhance your audience’s confidence.

Keep this section brief and to the point, and set the tone for the rest of the annual report. Overall, the annual report design should be clean, emphasizing readability, using simple, jargon-free language, bullet points, and visuals to break up your report.

Provide detailed company’s financial position and statements

As one of the report’s key aims is to encourage funding from investors, financial statements are an essential component of the report. Including your company’s financial condition proves your company’s commitment to transparency and accountability.

Here, you can show a report of how your company is generating revenue and turning a profit while keeping expenses to a minimum and that you can pay off debts in good time. You can also prove you have accurate financial statements and up-to-date information on your operations. These financial statements and reports are useful for planning the next financial year.

Include the following in financial statements:

• An income statement/profit and loss statement (income and expenses in the normal course, plus investments and changes in financial liabilities)
• A cash flow statement (the money that came in and went out during the year)
• A balance sheet (assets and liabilities; a snapshot of your financial position)
• A statement to shareholders (including the market price of the company’s shares and the dividends paid).

It’s important to use plenty of colorful visuals and infographics , such as graphs and charts, to aid the readers’ understanding and engagement. If you’re publishing the annual report online, you can make these visuals interactive. Each statement you submit needs additional notes to help clarify the facts and figures.

For example, state your accounting principles, explain the items in your balance sheet and income statement, and add disclaimers about forecasted income and expenses. Your financial statements should have been audited professionally before being presented publicly to directors, shareholders, or financial institutions. Include any comments made about financial statements by the auditors too.

Include an overview of the company’s operational performance

In the following section of the annual report (which is sometimes referred to in finance as a “management discussion and analysis”), you can go into more detail about your company’s operational and financial performance. Use your financial statements as a guide to report and analyze your profit margins, sales, and the rate of your profit and revenue growth.

This is also the place to review and report your company’s activities, like new hires, major contracts, acquisitions, and mergers. Describe your research and development activities for products or services launched last year. Mention any new facilities you’ve invested in and report any extraordinary events. Include details of risk assessments and future prospects.

Additionally, ensure that all relevant financial transactions associated with these activities are accurately recorded in your billing system for proper documentation and analysis.

To complete this part of the annual report, you’ll need to gather information from the operations of all teams and departments. If you have an ERP system , it should be quick and easy to find reliable reports relating to all your processes and operations. You can also use these operations reports as insights for future planning and highlighting areas for improvement.

This overview should continue the narrative theme of your report, answering essential questions about your operations but remaining concise. If a reader wants further information, you can always provide it in a more detailed version and form. You could start with bullet points and then expand on them, and use bold type and color panels to highlight key points.

Make annual reports authentic by including challenges 

As mentioned earlier, your annual report is about honesty and transparency. Rather than just tooting your own horn, you must present a fair and unbiased picture of your company’s performance and condition during the past year. That means you must recognize any weaknesses or problems the company faces.

If it’s been a difficult year for the company, be upfront about it. Explain what happened and report how you mitigated or resolved those issues. You also need to report any challenges you’ll face as the new financial year begins, whether the influencing factors are internal or external.

For instance, do you need to figure out how to comply with new laws or regulations? Are you getting to grips with a new software system or a hybrid working model? Is there an emerging security alert in the market? Most importantly, what strategies have you implemented to meet these challenges and reach your goals?

Most public companies choose to include their challenges in the form of a letter to their elected directors and shareholders at the beginning of the annual report. However, it’s better to have a separate section where you can submit a report with more full details provided. This will lend authenticity to the annual report. Again, you can use data visualization to make the report more engaging.

Add your progress on corporate social responsibility

Customers expect brands to take their ethical and social responsibilities seriously these days, so it’s important to demonstrate in your annual report your company’s credentials in this area. This will also improve your company’s reputation with directors, investors, employees, and prospective job applicants.

If you’re at the start of your journey, it’s okay to admit that there’s still more you can do as long as you explain how your company is continually working to improve. When you hold annual meetings, you could report this as a visual timeline of your progress , including significant milestones.

Within the company itself, you may see reporting companies have committed to initiatives in the form of workplace diversity, personal development, and employee wellbeing. Some companies offer flexible working practices for a better work-life balance. Give details of these programs and the company’s activities, and outline your targets for the year ahead.

In your annual report, tell readers about your progress on environmental sustainability. Perhaps you’ve switched to eco-friendly packaging or a paperless office, held meetings via video conference instead of traveling long distances, or started serving plant-based food in your lunchroom. Use charts to illustrate the reduction in your carbon footprint.

Include details of any causes you support and your charitable and community outreach activities. For example, you might raise money for a specific charity, sponsor a local event, or partner with schools for work experience opportunities and career open days.

Most public companies and limited liability companies have included this in their annual report to increase the public’s trust and confidence in the companies.

Include achievements for the year

Finally, it’s time to present your achievements from the past year. This part of the annual report may overlap somewhat with the sections on operations, financial performance, and corporate responsibility, but that’s okay—especially if you keep the information concise and engaging.

Explain how you’ve met the goals and targets you set the previous year, such as improving revenue by a certain amount, increasing website traffic, or reducing customer churn. Maybe you’ve taken on some talented new hires or boosted productivity with automated tools.

Use your cloud ERP system to access data from all your departments to give a well-rounded report on your achievements and highlight where you’ve succeeded. Instead of an entirely text-based section, you could use colored panels or a timeline graphic to highlight your top accomplishments.

Include photos and short descriptions of important projects too in the annual report. If the company has expanded into new regions, consider using a map. You could also add screenshots of customer reviews and testimonials from company websites or media reports featuring your company’s activities.

Report the impact these achievements have had on the company’s financial position, tying them into your company’s original mission statement. You can also include positive forecasts and predictions for the coming year based on your success so far.

Remember, your annual report is meant to portray your company honestly. Just as you shouldn’t hide your weaknesses, it’s important that you don’t over-inflate your accomplishments. Be humble and let the facts speak for themselves.

Compiling an annual report isn’t a quick or simple task. It’s a team effort, requiring collaboration from multiple departments. Information has to be accurate, especially your financial statements, and the report must give a positive impression of your company’s operations.

So, ensure you don’t leave your annual report until the last minute. Since it still has to be done on a yearly basis, you’ll find it easier if you put a proper system in place, keeping detailed records as you go. Pay attention to design and ensure the document style is consistent with your company branding .

Your report should paint a positive picture but don’t skip over any problems and challenges. The aim is to convince investors (and prospective customers and employees) that your company is profitable, socially responsible, and committed to growth. The people reading want to know about the human aspects of your business and economic aspects. 

Most public companies not only send annual reports electronically to stakeholders but also publish them online on company websites as well, which means it’s easier to share them with a wide audience and include quick feedback or response forms. You can also take the opportunity to make your visuals interactive. Allow readers the option to select the charts or metrics they want to see or click through to the website for further details.

Besides presenting your company’s financial position, annual reports are useful for guiding decision-making and showing where you’re headed. Now that you know how to create an annual report with the latest tips for 2024, you can make it stand out and present your company in the right light.

With Piktochart, you can create reports , presentations , posters , and more using our maker tool. You can simply sign up for free to access our templates, personalize and download!

You can even speed up the process by using our AI report maker . The tool does the heavy lifting for you, picking the best template that matches your prompt, and populates relevant text for your report.

Other Posts

10 Best Sales Report Templates for Tracking Revenue, KPIs & Growth

10 Types of HR Reports (With Templates and Examples)

7 Captivating Report Design Ideas And Tips (With Templates and Examples)

Do you want to be part of these success stories, join more than 11 million who already use piktochart to craft visual stories that stick..

How to Create Annual Reports in 2024 (with Examples)

By Rita Theologi

When writing annual reports , gathering all the financial information, distilling robust statistics, and finding compelling visuals that appeal to different audiences can be daunting, to say the least.

On top of that, most examples of annual reports are expensive and extremely time-consuming to produce when analyzing the financial performance of the previous year. The worst part about publishing an annual report is that without the ability to collect data about how people engage with it, you can only speculate about whether your efforts paid off. 

If you produce or distribute your annual report using outdated and offline formats like PDF , the following questions are often left unanswered:

• How much of my annual report do people read?
• Which sections do people find most interesting?
• Which parts do people disregard entirely?

In this post, you’ll learn how to create stunning annual reports that would inspire your stakeholders, elevate your brand messaging, and strengthen your market positioning.

You’ll see annual report examples of organizations that are using Foleon to produce web-based annual reports with extraordinary results .

Most importantly, you’ll learn how web technology allows you to create annual reports faster, efficiently and helps you gain insights into their performance.

5 reasons you should transition from static to web-based annual reports

More than ever before, today’s consumers want relatable content experiences . Your annual reports can be a part of those experiences if they are immersive and easy to read through . 

At Foleon, we’ve seen our clients create annual reports that include, among other things, achievements, fun facts, and eye-catching data, all packaged in a visually engaging and mobile-friendly way.

Inspired by those successes, we compiled five benefits of using interactive web-based annual reports that will motivate you to create annual reports that are impactful for your stakeholders in 2024.

1. Save time and stay-on-brand

Annual reports are so time-consuming that they often get published at the end of spring — if not later — which results in losing momentum with your audience. 

With Foleon’s intuitive drag-and-drop interface, complete with the ability to add your in-house fonts and styles , creating a web-based annual report can take a fraction of the time it would if you relied on professional designers using a tool like InDesign.

The best part? Our powerful template manager speeds up the content creation process by letting you preserve templates that you can reuse the following year. Save your precious working hours and focus on what matters the most: the story you want to share with your stakeholders.

2. Give your readers a lively content experience 

The compelling power of storytelling is undeniable. Gathering data from the past year is one thing, but presenting it in an engaging way that triggers emotion and excitement will take your annual business report to a whole new level.

With Foleon’s interactive creative solutions such as background videos, animation , visual effects, and interactive elements , it’s easy to enhance your story and grab readers’ attention . 

3. Maximize your reach with responsive annual reports 

Given that more than half of your readers are likely reading your content on mobile devices, you will end up excluding a large portion of your audience if your annual business report is in an unresponsive format like PDF . 

One of the most compelling benefits of web-based annual reports is that they’re mobile-friendly by default . Any responsive piece of content is already more likely to draw the attention of mobile and tablet users, so you should make the most of your distribution tactics. 

With web-based annual reports, distribution doesn’t have to stop after you send an email. Social share buttons and remarketing pixels prompt readers to share interesting pages on social media and let you retarget them (and their audience) even after they leave your publication . 

4. Get to know your readers by tracking user behavior

It would be disheartening to spend so much time creating an annual company report only to end up speculating about its performance. In the modern business world, anything that can’t be tracked or measured becomes redundant . This unwritten rule doesn’t just apply to your website, but to all of your content assets , including your annual reports. 

Foleon offers a variety of analytics, from a built-in reporting dashboard to a Google Analytics integration, that allows you to measure and optimize your annual report online based on time spent on specific pages, exit points, the effectiveness of CTAs, and more.

Our CRM integrations also allow you to see, on a contact level, how individuals engage with your annual report online. You can see which pages they read and — if you want to — trigger marketing automation based on this information.

5. Always stay up-to-date

There is nothing worse than publishing your annual report and then realizing that some information must be corrected or updated. Creating your 2024 annual report shouldn’t end on the day of publishing. You should be able to make adjustments, edit information and metrics, and add or delete copy even after distribution. 

With web-based annual reports, you can ensure that only your latest and best version is in circulation. You can make changes and updates in real time. Here are some annual report ideas to help you get started. 

Discover:  Annual report ideas to turn your content into showpieces.

Annual report examples using web-based publications

UC Merced, a higher education institution within the University of California system, transitioned from a printed annual report to an interactive web-based format with Foleon. Rich in visuals, animations , links, and social share buttons, their annual report engaged new readers and reached ten thousand visit sessions. 

“I searched for solutions or products that would let me build something similar to a web page. Honestly, I didn’t find anything I liked except your product.”

Christy Snyder, Communications Director at UC Merced

Note: For more examples of organizations that created stunning web-based annual reports with Foleon, check our annual report examples page . 

Key takeaways

Even though the purpose of an annual report may vary for each organization, the end goal is always the same: to impress readers and convey vital information about how your work affects all parties involved with your organization.

Given that stakeholders, customers, and potential investors all view your annual report, an archaic and analog production process could be a missed marketing opportunity .

The good news is that infusing your annual reports with web technology can save you money, time, and resources. You can measure, evaluate, and transform them into indispensable marketing assets that demonstrate your organization’s impact and financial position .

Using web-based annual reports will leverage your brand messaging, thrill your stakeholders, and increase readership.

Transform your content creation process from utterly exhausting to absolutely enjoyable. Improve your annual reports starting today; go here !

Comparison Guide

Pdfs vs foleon docs.

9 essential points to consider when creating your next piece of content.

Rita is a writer and content marketing specialist. She has years of experience in SaaS and continually enriches our blog with her wide range of expertise.

Want to write for the Foleon blog? Here's how to submit a guest post .

What to read next

Annual report ideas to turn your content into showpieces, elevating annual business reports: best practices and examples.

Penny Warnock

9 Examples of Engaging Annual Reports That Are Fun to Produce and Read

Dennis Looijenga

Free End of Year Report Templates

By Joe Weller | August 20, 2019

• Share on Facebook
• Share on LinkedIn

Link copied

An end of year report provides key information about a company’s performance and can help with strategic planning. Here, find the top annual report templates — all of which are free to download — and learn how to write a year end report.

Included on this page, you'll find a variety of free, helpful templates, including a simple year end report template , an annual financial report template , details on how to write an end of year report , and tips for writing an end of year report .

Simple Year End Report Template

This is a simple annual report that provides the basic sections: title page, executive summary, table of contents, annual financial report, and conclusion. The template comes with pre-built tables for you to add financial totals, but you can also customize the tables to include more in-depth financial information, or insert a separate financial report. Additionally, the conclusion provides space for an auditor’s report, if necessary. 

Download Simple Year End Report Template

Word | PDF | PowerPoint

Annual Financial Report Template

This template provides an in-depth breakdown of your organization’s financials for the previous and reporting years, so you can see changes in fiscal health over a one-year interval. The template includes a table with space to input revenue, operating expenses, operating profit, net profit, and tax, as well as room to add other budget metrics. The Excel version will automatically calculate totals, and you can easily cut and paste this template into your larger, written year end report.

Download Annual Financial Report Template

Excel | Word  

Annual Business Report Template

This simple spreadsheet template provides a detailed view of your company’s financials over time. Enter your planned revenue and expenses by month, and then track those estimates against actuals for the year. This template separates income from expenses, so you can clearly view cash flow, which enables you to get an accurate 12-month snapshot of your business finances. 

Download Annual Business Report Template

Excel | Smartsheet

Annual Sales Report Template

Use this annual sales report template to report on sales data from the past year, and also break down finances into monthly and quarterly activities. In addition, you can use this template for future planning by reviewing previous monthly and quarterly sales trends. Insert this sales report — available in a spreadsheet style — into a larger financial or year end report, so stakeholders can gain insight into the specifics of your sales figures. 

Download Annual Sales Report Template - Excel

Annual Marketing Report Template

This is a formal template for reporting on marketing department activities over the course of a year. The template includes an editable title page, a table of contents, an executive summary, and a conclusion page, as well as a comprehensive financial report. Input quarterly planned and actual costs, and the table will automatically calculate fiscal totals. Attach any supplemental material directly to the template, and then present this full scale marketing report directly to stakeholders. 

Download Annual Marketing Report Template

Word | PDF | PowerPoint |  Smartsheet

Department Year End Report Template

Use this Excel spreadsheet to create an annual financial overview of any department within your organization. Simply input details about every project (deliverables, client, etc.), the planned versus actual costs, and total income, and the template will automatically calculate the total net income. You can edit this template to fit the needs of a particular department, be it sales, marketing, or IT, and you can easily cut and paste it into a larger written document. 

Download Department Year End Report Template - Excel 

Annual Expense Report Template

Use this annual expense report template to document all profits and losses over the course of a year. The template includes sections to list revenue, reductions, and expenses (including professional services, banking and finance, general business, vehicle/travel, and taxes) in monthly intervals, and then combines totals to provide a full annual budget report. Once you’ve entered your totals for each month, a built-in, color-coded graph will depict gross profit, total expenses, and profit and loss. You can find additional templates in our collection of free expense report templates .

Download Annual Expense Report Template - Excel

Nonprofit Annual Report Template

This is a formal, comprehensive annual report template intended for nonprofit organizations. The template includes pages to reiterate mission statement, note all significant accomplishments, relay targeted impact stories, and list notable donors. Additionally, it provides an in-depth financial overview in a spreadsheet layout — simply add quarterly income from foundation grants, corporate and individual contributions, government contracts, and other donations, and then calculate tax, expenses, and other losses to provide an accurate annual financial summary.

Download Nonprofit Annual Report Template

Additional Project and Financial Tracking Templates

In this section, you’ll find additional templates that may assist in your annual reporting efforts, including a variety of financial planning and budgeting templates, a cash flow statement, project planning templates, and more.

Client Projects and Budget Overages Template

This comprehensive budgeting template tracks client projects (including individual tasks) with emphasis on planned versus actuals in labor, materials, and other costs (i.e., travel, equipment, and fixed costs). The template will then automatically calculate actual costs (which you can compare against planned costs) and produce a color-coded over/under balance. Use this template over time to improve budget planning and become more realistic when projecting client costs. 

Download Client Projects and Budget Overages Template

Monthly Billing Statement Template

Use this simple billing statement template to invoice any clients for services completed in the past month. Simply list the date, type of service provided, the invoice number, and balance due, and send the sheet to your customer to square away any outstanding payments. If applicable, you can also include remittance information, or edit the template to reflect weekly, quarterly, or annual billing, as appropriate. 

Download Monthly Billing Statement Template - Excel

Upcoming Projects Template

This is a simple project tracker template that you can use to list, track, and manage multiple projects. Document the status, priority, and deadline of each project, and then list information about each sub-task (description, assignee, deliverable, cost, percentage complete, etc.) as child rows. This template is useful for managing and reporting on projects within a portfolio, or when you simply need to track multiple projects simultaneously. 

Download Upcoming Projects Template - Excel

Income Statement Template

This simple income statement template functions as a budget report. Note total income, cost of goods sold, and total expenses (broken down into categories such as wages and benefits, rent/mortgage, utilities, web hosting, insurance, etc.). The Excel template automatically calculates the total net income to give you a high-level snapshot into your organization’s financial position. 

Download Income Statement Template

Balance Sheet Template

Businesses can create a balance sheet to provide a full financial overview by documenting all assets and liabilities. This balance sheet template prompts you to list all current and fixed assets and liabilities as well as the owner’s equity. Once complete, use the balance sheet as a summary of complicated financial data and share it with investors and other stakeholders. 

Download Balance Sheet Template

Cash Flow Statement Template

A cash flow statement documents the net flow of cash into and out of an organization, which is useful for analyzing overall business performance and aiding in financial planning. This simple cash flow statement template includes space to list beginning balance, cash receipts, cash payments, cost of goods sold, operating expenses, and other expenses, and then provides totals for total cash payments, net cash change, and monthly cash position. To learn more about these statements by reading “Free Cash Flow Statement Templates.”

Download Cash Flow Statement Template

Year End Reporting

A year end report , also called an annual report or end of year report , details an organization’s activities throughout the preceding year. The report typically communicates overall company performance, financial information, and other key performance indicators (KPIs) . Publicly-held companies must submit a year end report as part of their legal accountability to shareholders.

Collecting — and then interpreting — data on an annual cadence allows companies to reflect on their performance over the past year. This information is essential for making future projections, adjusting goals and timelines, and identifying any inefficiencies and areas for improvement. Annual reports can be intended for internal or external (stakeholder) use.

A year end report is different than a project management office (PMO) report , which is a document that a department creates to assess the performance or status of an individual project or group of projects.

All told, an annual report functions similarly to a school report card, taking into account various performance data and evaluating that data from multiple points of view. In addition to creating a year end report, you may choose to create quarterly or monthly reports in order to get a lower-rage view of performance.

Year End Payroll Reports

Use a year end payroll report to reconcile all the payroll information from the previous year. To create a year end payroll report, compile employee identification details (address, position, SSN, etc.), as well as all salary, benefits, and tax and deduction information. This report can fit in with an annual financial report and help plan the personnel budget for the upcoming year.

Benefits of a Year End Report

At its core, a year end report provides organizations an opportunity to evaluate their overall performance and reflect on the past year. The information in an annual report provides insight into what is and isn’t working, and therefore can prompt companies to reconsider their approach in multiple categories (operations, finance, hiring and staff retention, marketing, customer retention, etc.).

Additionally, creating a year end report will allow you to do the following:

• Make data-informed decisions for the future. 
• Identify overages by comparing estimates and actuals in a project budget, timeline, and employee time (to ensure you aren’t over or under-working your teams).
• Gain an understanding of how you spend resources. 
• Gain insight into staff and faculty success.
• Build organizational culture by demonstrating accountability and accuracy in reporting.

A year-end report can also double as marketing material — or at least serve as a jumping off point. Simply use the insights gained or data collected as content for public-facing materials.

How to Write an End of Year Report

Although annual reports may vary based on the industry or audience (i.e., internal or external stakeholders), a typical report — which should be a formal, written (typically Word or PDF) document — will include the following sections:

• Executive Summary: The executive summary presents an overview of the entire year end report. Clarify the purpose of the report (audience, intent, etc.), and provide a brief summary of the contents to follow. For more information on this section of the report, read "How to Write an Effective Executive Summary to Yield Results .”
• Total Projects Delivered: In this section, document the total number of accomplished projects. This KPI can reveal a lot about your organization’s efficiency and processes, but make sure to include context along with the numbers (i.e., project duration, complexity, etc.).
• Project Deliverables: The number of projects completed means little without context. Use this section to discuss the specifics of each project, from the deliverables to the client relationship, project scope, and how the project budget and schedule performed against estimates. Call attention to successes, but also own any failures or areas for improvement. Additionally, note both the tangible and intangible benefits of each project deliverable. 
• Full Financial Overview: This section is one of the most important — especially for publicly-traded companies. You must include an income report, a balance sheet, and a cash flow statement, as well as a written summary of any big financial changes.
• Accountant Perspective: In some cases, you may also be asked to include an auditor’s report. An accountant can provide an external, unbiased review on the financial and operational health of the company, which is especially useful (and sometimes necessary) for public companies.
• Operations Overview: Provide a description of your operations to flesh out the financial report. This section can provide context for the numbers, and offer an explanation of any net losses or overages. Sometimes, you can include the operations summary as part of the financial report. 
• Conclusion: Write a formal conclusion in which you reiterate the key points of the annual report.

Tips for Writing a Year End Report

Regardless of your industry, you should adhere to the following best practices when compiling your end of year report:

• Know Your Audience: Is the report intended for internal or external viewers? The answer to this question determines the aim of your report (i.e., are you trying to motivate internal change or drive external actions such as increasing sales, promoting your brand, or reassuring stakeholders?). Understand your audience’s needs and anticipate questions or objections they may have. Even if multiple parties will be reading your report, focus on the key recipients, rather than attempting to cater to everyone’s needs. 
• Get to the Point: Before you start writing, ensure everyone is clear on the report’s objective(s). Identify what you’re trying to achieve and make your point(s) clearly and concisely. The data you include should speak for itself (or require minimal explanation and written analysis), and only include support material if absolutely necessary.
• Pay Attention to the Writing Itself: A strong annual report does more than simply relay facts and figures. For maximal impact, approach the report as a piece of writing, and therefore pay attention to tone, style, and writing quality. At minimum, focus on crafting simple sentences and using strong, active verbs. Use literal (rather than abstract) language, avoid cliches and jargon, and steer clear of confusing imagery or mixed metaphors. The writing doesn’t have to be bland, though. In fact, you can use the annual report as an opportunity to showcase your brand’s voice and personality.
• Be Sincere and Accurate: Remember the overriding goal of your report is to communicate information. Make objective, accurate claims, and don’t try to impress readers or be overly optimistic. 
• Pay Attention to Quality: Regardless of your audience, remember that an end of year report is a formal document. Take your time, write multiple drafts (experts recommend at least three), and engage multiple editors to ensure quality of both writing and data presentation.
• Be Intentional about How You Communicate Information: Format the report logically (for a general guide of how to structure the report, read the section above). Additionally, look for opportunities to communicate complicated data visually; for instance, with infographics or visual dashboards.
• Be Proactive: Get in the habit of producing a year end report — even if nobody requests one. This way, you’ll be prepared in the event of a last-minute stakeholder demand, and will also have ample experience culling company data into a report. Regularly and reliably creating year end reports is an easy way to build accountability and trust with stakeholders and customers.
• Build a Process for Collecting Data: Institute a process for collecting data to ensure that you produce regular, timely annual reports. Doing so will greatly ease the experience of writing a report since you’ll only need to compile the data and add written context, rather than mine information in a last-minute scramble.

Make Better Decisions, Faster with Smartsheet Dashboards

Empower your people to go above and beyond with a flexible platform designed to match the needs of your team — and adapt as those needs change. 

The Smartsheet platform makes it easy to plan, capture, manage, and report on work from anywhere, helping your team be more effective and get more done. Report on key metrics and get real-time visibility into work as it happens with roll-up reports, dashboards, and automated workflows built to keep your team connected and informed. 

When teams have clarity into the work getting done, there’s no telling how much more they can accomplish in the same amount of time.  Try Smartsheet for free, today.

Discover why over 90% of Fortune 100 companies trust Smartsheet to get work done.

Researched by Consultants from Top-Tier Management Companies

Powerpoint Templates

Icon Bundle

Kpi Dashboard

Professional

Business Plans

Swot Analysis

Gantt Chart

Business Proposal

Marketing Plan

Project Management

Business Case

Business Model

Cyber Security

Business PPT

Digital Marketing

Digital Transformation

Human Resources

Product Management

Artificial Intelligence

Company Profile

Acknowledgement PPT

PPT Presentation

Reports Brochures

One Page Pitch

Interview PPT

All Categories

Top 10 Annual Report Summary Templates with Samples and Examples

Sapna Singh

“We read hundreds and hundreds of annual reports every year,” this answer from Warren Buffet, (CEO, Berkshire Hathaway), when asked about the secrets of his investment success, speaks volumes about the importance of an annual report in the ‘life’ of a company. If the world’s most successful investor, Buffet, reads it, then it has to be important.

In fact, Buffet has also spoken at length on why your annual report is an important piece of content. It is a thorough report outlining your company's operations for the previous year. It provides users, such as shareholders or potential investors, with information about the company’s operations and financial performance.

When you create a compelling annual report, you’re showing the stakeholders  that their investment is worthwhile. It garners the goodwill of shareholders, and reminds your team of the importance of what it does.

Annual Reports can be lengthy documents. For example, Bank of America published a 214-page annual report in 2017. It included 180-odd pages of financial discussion and statistical tables. Unsurprisingly, many shareholders and even investors aren’t sure what parts of an annual report are the most important and why. Analyzing an entire annual report can take an entire day.

Don’t spend too much time on numbers and charts in annual reports. It is a good idea to read about the company’s financial results in its earnings report, but this is, generally, a relatively short document. This blog helps you focus your energy and effort as SlideTeam has complied an extensive guide on Annual Report Summary Templates to cover all operations and financial scenarios in an organization. These PPT Presentations and One-Pager Documents help present the most credible source of information for your business, the Annual Report, in a version that suits investors. They may choose which area of your business they would want to study in detail.

The summary highlights key points so that the reader doesn’t need to read the entire report. It’s rare, even for experienced stakeholders or investors, to read an entire 200-plus page annual report cover-to-cover. Check out this set of templates to get the opportunity for outreach and investment promotion .

Discover the essential financial summaries you need to comprehend the performance and potential of your business.

Template 1: Sales and Marketing Summary Annual Report

A sales and marketing report gives you a thorough overview of your business’s sales activity. Use this PPT Sample to deliver a stunning presentation for an annual report. This comprehensive deck contains all the information you'll need to use in your report and emphasize the company's financial position, income statement, goals, and plans. The core of a sales and marketing activity is presented in this presentation template, which is more than just a dry document full of statistics and justifications. Use sales report template to gain impactful, insights about your company. Get it now!

Download now!

TEMPLATE 2: Long- and Short-Term Target Annual Report Summary

Present your annual report on the operational and financial performance of the company for the previous year using this PPT Template. Use this template to demonstrate its business successes to stakeholders over the course of a lengthy or brief process. All summaries are included in this deck, including long-term goals and objectives, global business opportunity and keys to business growth, overall business financial highlights and future insights etc. The most advantageous operational model is also hinted at in this useful presentation template tool. Download it now!

TEMPLATE 3: Annual Report Executive Summary Template

Your executive summary should give an overview the annual report. It takes time and multiple drafts to extract useful, relevant information. You can confidently summarize financial information for your company’s shareholders, clients, and other investors with this template. This template focuses on annual turnover, key clients, the number of offices and employees, business operations mapping, the organization's mission, vision, and values, the volume of the company’s activity. Create a fantastic summary of the business's accomplishments, including metrics used in sales, marketing, operations, etc. Download this complete deck to streamline your company's operations.

TEMPLATE 4: Marketing Summary Annual Report

Use this PPT template to discuss marketing tactics and channels your company has used to increase sales and produce revenue from a variety of products and channels. This report concentrates on proper KPIs to increase revenue and track advancement. With a comparison of marketing and operational costs, thorough income statements, and marketing strategies like niche marketing and event sponsorship for advertising, you can highlight the revenue generation in your business. To get a bird’s eye view of your company, download this presentation template.

TEMPLATE 5: One-Page Department Annual Report Summary

Sharing specific updates on the activities of departments with staff members, trustees, and other stakeholders can be incredibly difficult. To address them all at once, use our carefully-curated One-Pager Document. This template is the best possible tool to include details of departments in a comprehensive annual assessment report. This one-pager includes an annual summary for the HR, IT, finance, sales, and marketing departments. Use this aesthetically pleasing and simple-to-read document to summarize the annual activities of your companies. Grab this flexible design and check departmental performance.

TEMPLATE 6: One-Pager Annual Report Executive Summary

This one-page PowerPoint Template executive summary allows you to present company information in a concise, understandable manner. It gives you room to outline the main achievements of the business as well as its present situation. Use it to attract quality funding based on the company’s current financial standing. Get it now!

TEMPLATE 7: Summary Page of Annual Report Analysis

Use this one-page PowerPoint slide to summarize the company’s financial activities over previous years. Deploy this PowerPoint Template for a company overview to communicate the business’s operations, finances, and management’s viewpoint. With metrics to assess EBITDA, earning per share (EPS), efficiency ratio, and other financial performance indicators, this template sheds light on your organization's financial performance over the previous 10 fiscal years. This year-end financial template includes pie charts, bar graphs, and line graphs that can be altered to meet the organization's unique needs.

TEMPLATE 8: Summary Page of Annual Report Structure

The annual report is one of the most crucial financial documents your company produces. Use this one-page infographic to share pertinent details with all prospective investors or shareholders. This annual report structure PPT template can help you communicate management principles to your audience. The company’s overview, management message, income statement, balance sheet, annual reports financials, etc. are all included in this pre-made graphic. Use this template to provide information about your company on a single page. Get it now!

TEMPLATE 9: Summary Page Of Agency Recruitment Annual Report

Use our one-pager PowerPoint Template to give an in-depth rundown of your agency’s hiring procedure. This PPT infographic summarizes statistics relating to hiring effectiveness and business overview over the fiscal review. Private employment agencies can use this pre-designed template to make a compelling sales case to hiring managers and job seekers. Sections like ‘Business overview ‘Latest trends in the recruitment market’; ‘Staff sourcing information,’ and others. This PPT Slide is practical and prepared for use with appropriate adjustments. Grab this template to connect with recruiters and job seekers.

TEMPLATE 10: One-Pager Retail Company Annual Report Summary

Retail businesses can use this One-Pager PPT Template as a helpful tool to reflect on their annual business progress. Include this slide to present company summary, M&A synergy information, significant business highlights, risk and mitigation strategies, etc. You may even key-in your own details. Download now and take a step forward toward achieving your business goal.

Upgrade your report game

Most annual reports are not even opened, let alone read. Providing a summary report gives all key points relevant for stakeholders. For this, you must comprehend the data to capture it accurately when writing the report’s summary. Explore the 10 Annual report summary templates.

PS: Check out our guide  to use the ready-to-use annual report PowerPoint Template to create a visually engaging report to shareholders and make the most of your annual report presentation.

FAQs ON ANNUAL REPORT SUMMARY

What is the purpose of an annual report.

An annual report is compiled to let stakeholders and potential investors get an insight into a business. It is the most thorough way for a company to communicate with its stakeholders. This report is the best tool to find out everything you need to know about a company, including its past, present, and future prospects as well as its financial performance in detail as shown in financial statements, corporate governance, and CSR initiatives . It helps in reviewing the year's operations and present the company's outlook and prospects for the ensuing year. A company is required to deliver this report every year to all shareholders.

What are the four components of an annual report?

An annual report  is a detailed, all-inclusive summary of a company’s accomplishments and financial results from the previous year. Following are the primary components of an annual report:

A) Financial Statements :

It is an essential part of an annual report and provides a thorough breakdown of the gains or losses over a fiscal year. The difference between total revenue and cost of goods sold, or gross profit or loss, is displayed in the first subsection of the income statement.

B) Management overview :

The introduction section contains the chairman’s statement and the director’s report. It also includes a summary of the financial situation’s results and composition of the Board Of Directors (BOD).

C) Corporate financial data :

It displays an organization's financial stability. External stakeholders use it to evaluate the overall state of an organization as well as its financial performance and market value.

D) Notes to financial statements :

To make financial statements more understandable, notes to the these provide additional details. Accounting practices and uncertainties that might obscure a company’s assets and liabilities are also explained in this section.

Related posts:

• How to Design the Perfect Service Launch Presentation [Custom Launch Deck Included]
• Quarterly Business Review Presentation: All the Essential Slides You Need in Your Deck
• [Updated 2023] How to Design The Perfect Product Launch Presentation [Best Templates Included]
• 99% of the Pitches Fail! Find Out What Makes Any Startup a Success

Liked this blog? Please recommend us

Top 10 Payroll Reports Templates with Samples and Examples (Free PDF Attached)

Top 10 Progress Status Report Templates with Samples and Examples (Free PDF Attached)

This form is protected by reCAPTCHA - the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Digital revolution powerpoint presentation slides

Sales funnel results presentation layouts

3d men joinning circular jigsaw puzzles ppt graphics icons

Business Strategic Planning Template For Organizations Powerpoint Presentation Slides

Future plan powerpoint template slide

Project Management Team Powerpoint Presentation Slides

Brand marketing powerpoint presentation slides

Launching a new service powerpoint presentation with slides go to market

Agenda powerpoint slide show

Four key metrics donut chart with percentage

Engineering and technology ppt inspiration example introduction continuous process improvement

Meet our team representing in circular format

• Business Essentials
• Leadership & Management
• Credential of Leadership, Impact, and Management in Business (CLIMB)
• Entrepreneurship & Innovation
• *New* Digital Transformation
• Finance & Accounting
• Business in Society
• For Organizations
• Support Portal
• Media Coverage
• Founding Donors
• Leadership Team

• Harvard Business School →
• HBS Online →
• Business Insights →

Business Insights

Harvard Business School Online's Business Insights Blog provides the career insights you need to achieve your goals and gain confidence in your business skills.

• Career Development
• Communication
• Decision-Making
• Earning Your MBA
• Negotiation
• News & Events
• Productivity
• Staff Spotlight
• Student Profiles
• Work-Life Balance
• Alternative Investments
• Business Analytics
• Business Strategy
• Business and Climate Change
• Design Thinking and Innovation
• Digital Marketing Strategy
• Disruptive Strategy
• Economics for Managers
• Entrepreneurship Essentials
• Financial Accounting
• Global Business
• Launching Tech Ventures
• Leadership Principles
• Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability
• Leading with Finance
• Management Essentials
• Negotiation Mastery
• Organizational Leadership
• Power and Influence for Positive Impact
• Strategy Execution
• Sustainable Business Strategy
• Sustainable Investing
• Winning with Digital Platforms

How to Quickly & Effectively Read an Annual Report

• 04 Jun 2020

Intelligent investing requires analyzing a vast amount of information about a company to determine its financial health. Armed with this information, an investor can better understand how much risk might be involved with backing a company based on how well it’s performed historically, in recent quarters, and toward its financial targets.

Exactly where this information comes from depends on the specific company that’s being invested in, but typically requires several financial statements, including a balance sheet, cash flow statement, and income statement.

In addition to these documents, most investors look forward to reviewing a company’s annual report—a collection of financial information and analysis that can prove invaluable in evaluating the health of a company.

If you’re not an investor, but an employee working within a corporation, the annual report can impart valuable information pertinent to your career. Understanding how your company is performing and the impact your actions have had on its business objectives can help you advocate for a promotion or other form of career advancement .

If you’re unfamiliar with what goes into an annual report, there’s some good news: You don’t need to be a financial expert to get value out of the document or understand the messaging in it.

Here’s an overview of the different information you’ll find in an annual report and how you can put it to use.

Access your free e-book today.

What Is an Annual Report?

An annual report is a publication that a public corporation is required by law to publish annually. It describes the company’s operations and financial conditions so that current and potential shareholders can make informed decisions about investing in it.

The annual report is often split into two sections, or halves.

The first section typically includes a narrative of the company’s performance over the previous year, as well as forward-looking statements: Letters to shareholders from the chief executive officer, chief financial officer, and other key figures, as well as graphics, photos, and charts.

The second section strips the narrative out of the picture and presents a variety of financial documents and statements.

Unlike other pieces of financial data—and because they include editorial and storytelling—annual reports are typically professionally designed and used as marketing collateral. Annual reports are sent to shareholders every year before an annual shareholder meeting and election of the board of directors, and often accessible to the public via the company’s website.

Annual Report vs. 10-K Report

Annual reports aren’t the only documents public companies are required to publish yearly. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requires public firms also to produce a 10-K report , which informs investors of a business’s financial status before they buy or sell shares.

While there’s similar data in both an annual and 10-K report, the two documents are separate.

10-K reports are organized per SEC guidelines and include full descriptions of a company’s fiscal activity, corporate agreements, risks, opportunities, current operations, executive compensation, and market activity. You can also find detailed discussions of operations for the year, as well as a full analysis of the industry and marketplace.

Because of this, 10-K reports are longer and denser than annual reports, and have strict filing requirements—they must be filed with the SEC between 60 to 90 days after the end of a company’s fiscal year.

If you need to review a 10-K report, you can find it on the SEC website .

What Information Is Contained In An Annual Report?

An annual report typically consists of:

• Letters to shareholders: These documents provide a broad overview of the company’s activities and performance over the course of the year, as well as a reflection on its general business environment. An annual report usually includes a shareholder letter from the CEO or president, and may also contain letters from other key figures, such as the CFO.
• Management’s discussion and analysis (MD&A): This is a detailed analysis of the company’s performance, as conducted by its executives.
• Audited financial statements: These are financial documents that detail the company’s financial performance. Commonly included statements include balance sheets, cash flow statements, income statements, and equity statements.
• A summary of financial data: This refers to any notes or discussions that are pertinent to the financial statements listed above.
• Auditor’s report: This report describes whether the company has complied with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) in preparing its financial statements.
• Accounting policies: This is an overview of the policies the company’s leadership team relied upon in preparing the annual report and financial statements.

What to Look for in an Annual Report

While all the information found in an annual report can be useful to potential investors, the financial statements are particularly valuable, as they provide data that isn’t obscured by any sort of narrative or opinion. Three of the most important financial statements you should evaluate are the balance sheet, cash flow statement, and income statement.

The balance sheet shows a company’s assets, liabilities, and owners’ equity accounts as of a specific date, illustrating its financial position and health.

The income statement shows a company’s revenue and expense accounts for a set period, allowing you to gauge its financial performance. Using trial balances from any two points in time, a business can create an income statement that tells the financial story of the activities for that period.

Cash flow statements provide a detailed picture of what happened to a business’s cash during an accounting period. A cash flow statement shows the different areas in which a company used or received cash, and reconciles the beginning and ending cash balances. Cash flows are important for valuing a business and managing liquidity, and essential to understanding where actual cash is being generated and used. The statement of cash flows gives more detail about the sources of cash inflows and the uses of cash outflows.

These three documents can help you understand the financial health and status of a company, and they’re all included in the annual report. When you read the annual report—including the editorial information—you can gain a better understanding of the business as a whole.

An annual report can help you learn more details about what type of company you work for and how it operates, including:

• Whether it’s able to pay debts as they come due
• Its profits and/or losses year over year
• If and how it’s grown over time
• What it requires to maintain or expand its business
• Operational expenses compared to generated revenues

All of these insights can help you excel in your role, be privy to conversations surrounding the future of the company, and develop into an effective leader .

Critical Information for Investors and Employees Alike

Being able to analyze annual reports can help you gain a clearer picture of where a company sits within its industry and the broader economy, illuminating opportunities and threats.

The best part about learning to read and understand financial information is that you don’t need to be a certified accountant to do so. Start by analyzing financial documents over a set period. Then, when the annual and 10-K reports are published, you can review and understand what leadership is saying about the operational and financial health of your company.

If you’re an investor, knowing how to read an annual report can give you more information from which to base your decision on whether to invest in a company. If you’re an employee within an organization, learning how to read and apply the information contained in an annual report is an essential financial accounting skill that can help you understand your company’s goals and capabilities and, ultimately, further your career.

Do you want to take your career to the next level? Explore Financial Accounting and our other online finance and accounting courses , which can teach you the key financial topics you need to understand business performance and potential. Download our free course flowchart to determine which best aligns with your goals.

About the Author

• How It Works
• Get 3 Quotes
• For Accountants Become A Partner Log In

How To Write An Annual Report

An annual report holds immense significance in showcasing the progress, accomplishments, and financial health of a company. The annual report isn't just a mandatory document; it's an opportunity to communicate your business's story to stakeholders, investors, and the public. But how do you write an annual report?

Get Help With Annual Report

What is an annual report?

Annual report is a compilation of financial information that gives insight into your company’s financial position and operational activities from the previous year. A comprehensive annual report gives stakeholders, potential donors, and other interested parties information about the business, which they can use to make decisions. Filing an annual report is crucial to keep a company in good standing and to keep it as a registered entity.

How do you write an annual report?

1.  start off with the shareholder's letter.

This vital communication is written by the CEO or manager of the business and its tone sets the mood for the entire report. Care should be taken to remain inspiring and positive and inject a hint of personality into this personal communication. 

2. Add a general description of the industry

In this section you want to create a positive an inspiring picture of the industry as a whole .  Here, you should include numeric data about your market share as a player in the industry or positive predictions that indicate the upward trend in the growth of customer awareness of your business, positive reviews or regard and your networking among key players in the industry. In this section the aim should be to inspire optimism among major stakeholders. 

3. Include audited statements of income

Income and expense reports should always have been through a professional  audit  before being presented to shareholders, financial institutions, and potential investors. This instills an air of reliability and confidence in the reader.  This section should include the annual income of the business, alongside the expense statements .  Financial statements can include balance sheets, income or profit and loss statements and a  cash flow statement  - they sum up the financial position of the business. 

4. State your financial position

In this section you can make use of colorful charts and graphs to indicate the true financial position of the business. Stakeholders want to see that the business is generating income, minimizing expenses, turning a profit and planning the next financial year according to accurate financial information. 

5. Give details about cash flow

Details about the ready, inflow of cash into the business will be of great importance to those reading your report. This section should relate to the section about income statements and refer to information and graphs noted in this section.  While the business may be rich in assets or potential profits, the cash flow is the total of finances being transferred in and out of a company's bank account during the financial year. This affects the liquidity of the business and is a true reflection of business stability. 

6. Provide notes to the statements for line items

Your financial statements may not be easy for individuals who are not directly involved in the business to understand. For this reason, all the financial statements need to include additional notes to clarify each or several facts and figures in the statements.

In order to provide accurate details about the financial status of the business, the information used to compile the report must be as accurate as possible . Errors made during the collection process or compilation of the report can substantially affect the viewpoint of shareholders and fuel funding concerns as well as affect management decisions. In this segment we explain how a report is written, how to avoid mistakes during data collection and provide encouragement on how to begin the process. 

What should be included in an annual report?

The six basic components of an annual report are:

• The shareholder's letter
• General description of the industry
• Audited Income Statements
• Financial Position
• Explanatory notes

You may include brief additional sections, but it's generally recommended to adhere to these six basic sections. This makes the report easier and less time-consuming to read and easier to understand at a glance. Aim for an inspiring, concise report that paints a positive picture of the status of company's finances. 

What to consider when writing an annual report?

1. planning.

The success of every financial report begins in the planning stage . In this stage you consult and involve the planning committee to determine the data you need, who is responsible for collating and compiling income and expenditure reports, data on operations or information on accounting practices and requirements. It is important to include all the relevant information, without making the report too long or tedious to read. 

Remember : Shareholders and stakeholders are interested in finding out the results of your yearly operations. 

Aim to include relevant information in an inspiring report . To do this you want to include meaningful results, not just long lists of data. Try to use the facts and figures included in the report to tell a story . At this stage you will want to develop a basic framework for the data, graphs, charts, predictions and photographs you want to include in the report.

3. Pitfalls to avoid

When learning how to write an annual report, mistakes are inevitable. As already noted, making the report too long, confusing or tedious to read is a common mistake.

Tip : you want to stick to the shortest possible length, while providing ALL the relevant data. This data should be relevant to the particular stakeholders or potential donors you want to attract.  Including too many details and information about daily operations will result in boredom and doesn't get down to the basic results that the parties need to know.

Make sure to answer the following questions:

• Why does the company exist?
• What is the vision or objective of the business?
• What is the strategy to reach this goal?
• How does the company make money?
• Online reports: What is included in the annual report?

The importance of online annual reports

These days many companies share their annual reports online. This is an effective way to reach many stakeholders at once and allow sharing of the document with interested parties in a network. While reports are similar to paper copies, online reports are an excellent way to get immediate feedback on your annual reports. By including an online feedback facility or response form, readers and shareholders can respond personally to the CEO, asking for more information, improved formatting or praising the content and structure of the report. So, don't forget to consider online cloud-based platforms and other online formats.

Do you need help with Annual Report?

Finding the right accountant has never been easier. In just 5 minutes, we'll get to know you and the kind of help you're looking for.

Related articles

Accounting software vs. hiring an accountant: pros and cons, how much does an accountant cost, the ultimate breakdown of the "80-120 rule", get new articles delivered to your inbox., let's find your next accountant..

• Tax Professional

Please briefly describe your needs. A Client Consultant will reach out to confirm the details.

cta_box.sub_headline

Let's get to know each other

How to Write an Executive Summary for a Report: Step By Step Guide with Examples

Table of contents

So you have finally written a great comprehensive business report that took you weeks to create. You have included all the data from the different departments, compared it, done the analysis, made forecasts, and provided solutions to specific problems.

There is just one problem – the key stakeholders in the company don’t have enough time to go through the whole report.

Since the data and the KPIs that you included in the report are necessary for quality decision-making, you can see why this can become a huge issue.

Luckily, there is a way to present all of your key findings and not take too much of their time. This is done through executive summaries.

An executive summary is exactly what the name suggests – a summary. It is essentially a quick overview of all the most important metrics in the report. The purpose of this summary is to bring the attention of the highest-ranking members in the company to the most important KPIs that they will consider when making decisions.

While an executive summary is a rather short section, it doesn’t mean that it’s easy to write. You will have to pay extra attention to every single sentence in order to avoid unnecessary information.

Do you want to learn how to create an informative executive summary? This guide will show you all you need to know.

What Is an Executive Report?

What is an executive summary in a report, how long should an executive summary be, who is the audience of an executive summary, what should be included in an executive summary report, how to write an executive summary report, common mistakes to avoid when writing executive summaries, executive report examples, executive summary templates, create executive reports in databox.

Executive reports are used for keeping senior managers updated on the latest and most significant activities in the company. These reports have to be concise and accurate since they will have a huge impact on the most important business-related decisions.

Working for any sort of company requires writing different types of reports such as financial reports , marketing reports , sales reports , internal reports, and more.

What all of these reports have in common is that they are very comprehensive and typically require a lot of time to go through them –way too much time, if you ask busy managers.

They include a wealthy amount of data and a bunch of different metrics which are more useful for a particular team in the company. However, the highest-ranking members tend to be more focused on only the most essential KPIs that they need for making future decisions and strategies.

This is why executive reports come in handy. They are usually only a few pages long and they include only the most relevant details and data that incurred in a specific period.

An executive summary is the brief overview section included in a long report or document. This part of the report primarily focuses on the key topics and most important data within it. It can include an overall business goal of the company or short-term strategic objectives.

This summary is primarily useful for C-level managers who don’t have time to read the whole report but want to have an insight into the main KPIs and latest business performances.

Bank officials also may use executive summaries since it’s the quickest way for them to estimate whether your company represents a good investment opportunity.

Depending on your company’s practice, executive summaries can either be placed at the beginning of the report or as a formal section in the table of contents. 

The length of the summary depends on the type of report, but it is typically one or two pages long.

To know whether you have written a good executive summary, you can ask yourself, “Are the stakeholders going to have all the information they need to make decisions?”

If the answer is yes, you have done a good job.

There is no strict rule about how long executive summaries should be. Each company is unique which means the length will always vary. In most cases, it will depend on the size of the report/business plan.

However, a universal consensus is that it should be anywhere from one to four pages long or five to ten percent of the length of the report.

This is typically more than enough space to summarize the story behind the data and provide your stakeholders with the most important KPIs for future decision-making.

The people most interested in reading the executive summary are typically the ones who don’t have time to read the whole report and want a quick overview of the most important data and information.

These include:

• Project stakeholders – The individuals or organizations that are actively involved in a project with your company.
• Management personnel (decision-makers) – The highest-ranking employees in your company (manager, partner, general partner, etc.)
• Investors – As we said, this could be bank officials who want a quick recap of your company’s performance so they can make an easier investment decision.
• Venture capitalists – Investors who provide capital in exchange for equity stakes.
• C-level executives – The chief executives in your business.

Related : Reporting Strategy for Multiple Audiences: 6 Tips for Getting Started

The components of your executive summary depend on what is included in the overall larger document. Executive summary elements may also vary depending on the type of document (business plan, project, report, etc.), but there are several components that are considered universal.

These are the main elements you should include:

• Methods of analyzing the problem
• Solutions to the problem
• The ‘Why Now’ segment

Well-defined conclusion

The purpose of the summary should typically be included in the introduction as an opening statement. Explain what you aim to achieve with the document and communicate the value of your desired objective.

This part is supposed to grab your reader’s attention, so make sure they pay extra attention when writing it.

Problems are an unavoidable element in modern-day businesses, even in the most successful companies.

The second thing your executive summary needs to outline is what specific problem you are dealing with. It could be anything from product plans and customer feedback to sales revenue and marketing strategies.

Define the problems clearly so all the members know which areas need fixing.

3. Methods of analyzing the problem

Problem analysis methods are key for identifying the causes of the issue.

While figuring out the problems and the methods to solve them is immensely important, you shouldn’t overlook the things that caused them. This will help you from avoiding similar issues in the future.

4. Solutions to the problem

Now that you’ve introduced the stakeholders to the problems, it’s time to move on to your solutions. Think of a few different ways that could solve the issue and include as many details as you can.

5. The ‘Why Now’ segment

This is one of the most important parts of your executive summary.

The ‘Why Now’ segment showcases why the problem needs to be solved in a timely manner. You don’t want the readers to get the impression that there is plenty of time to fix the issue.

By displaying urgency in your summary, your report will have a much bigger impact.

One of the ways to display urgency visually is by adding performance benchmarks to your report. In case your business is not performing well as other companies within your industry, only one image showcasing which metrics are below the median could make a compelling case for the reader.

For example, if you have discovered that your churn rate is much higher than for an average SaaS company, this may be a good indication that you have issues with poor customer service, poor marketing, pricing issues, potentially outdated product features, etc.

Benchmark Your Performance Against Hundreds of Companies Just Like Yours

Viewing benchmark data can be enlightening, but seeing where your company’s efforts rank against those benchmarks can be game-changing. 

Browse Databox’s open Benchmark Groups and join ones relevant to your business to get free and instant performance benchmarks. 

Lastly, you should end your executive summary with a well-defined conclusion.

Make sure to include a recap of the problems, solutions, and the overall most important KPIs from the document.

Okay, so you understand the basics of executive summaries and why they are so important. However, you still aren’t sure how to write one.

Don’t worry.

Here are some of the best practices you can use to create amazing executive summaries that will impress your key stakeholders and high-ranking members.

Write it Last

Grab their attention, use appropriate language, talk strategy, include forecasts, highlight funding needs, make it short.

The most natural way to write your executive summary is by writing it at the end of your report/business plan.

This is because you will already have gone through all the most important information and data that should later be included.

A good suggestion is to take notes of all the significant KPIs that you think should be incorporated in the summary, it will make it easier for you to later categorize the data and you will have a clearer overview of the key parts of the report.

You may think that you already know which data you are going to include, but once you wrap up your report, you will probably run into certain things that you forgot to implement. It’s much easier to create an executive summary with all the data segmented in one place, than to rewrite it later.

While your primary goal when creating the executive summary is to make it informative, you also have to grab the attention of your readers so that you can motivate them to read the rest of the document.

Once they finish reading the last few sentences of the summary, the audience should be looking forward to checking out the remanding parts to get the full story.

If you are having trouble with finding ways to capture the reader’s attention, you can ask some of your colleagues from the sales department to lend a hand. After all, that’s their specialty.

One more important element is the type of language you use in the summary. Keep in mind who will be reading the summary, your language should be adjusted to a group of executives.

Make the summary understandable and avoid using complicated terms that may cause confusion, your goal is to feed the stakeholders with important information that will affect their decision-making.

This doesn’t only refer to the words that you use, the way in which you provide explanation should also be taken into consideration. People reading the report should be able to easily and quickly understand the main pain points that you highlighted.

You should have a specific part in your executive summary where you will focus on future strategies. This part should include information regarding your project, target market, program, and the problems that you think should be solved as soon as possible.

Also, you should provide some useful insights into the overall industry or field that your business operates in. Showcase some of the competitive advantages of your company and specific marketing insights that you think the readers would find interesting.

Related : What Is Strategic Reporting? 4 Report Examples to Get Inspiration From

Make one of the sections revolve around financial and sales forecasts for the next 1-3 years. Provide details of your breakeven points, such as where the expenses/revenues are equal and when you expect certain profits from your strategies.

This practice is mainly useful for business plans, but the same principle can be applied to reports. You can include predictions on how your overall objectives and goals will bring profit to the company.

Related : How Lone Fir Creative Uses Databox to Forecast, Set, & Achieve Agency & Client Goals

Don’t forget to talk about the funding needs for your projects since there is a high chance that investors will find their way to the executive summary as well.

You can even use a quotation from an influential figure that supports your upcoming projects. Include the costs that will incur but also provide profitability predictions that will persuade the investors to fund your projects.

While your report should include all of the most important metrics and data, aim for maximum conciseness.

Don’t include any information that may be abundant and try to keep the executive summary as short as possible. Creating a summary that takes up dozens of pages will lose its original purpose.

With a concise summary and clear communication of your messages, your readers will have an easy time understanding your thoughts and then take them into consideration.

Also, one last tip is to use a positive tone throughout the summary. You want your report to exude confidence and reassure the readers.

PRO TIP: How Well Are Your Marketing KPIs Performing?

Like most marketers and marketing managers, you want to know how well your efforts are translating into results each month. How much traffic and new contact conversions do you get? How many new contacts do you get from organic sessions? How are your email campaigns performing? How well are your landing pages converting? You might have to scramble to put all of this together in a single report, but now you can have it all at your fingertips in a single Databox dashboard.

Our Marketing Overview Dashboard includes data from Google Analytics 4 and HubSpot Marketing with key performance metrics like:

• Sessions . The number of sessions can tell you how many times people are returning to your website. Obviously, the higher the better.
• New Contacts from Sessions . How well is your campaign driving new contacts and customers?
• Marketing Performance KPIs . Tracking the number of MQLs, SQLs, New Contacts and similar will help you identify how your marketing efforts contribute to sales.
• Email Performance . Measure the success of your email campaigns from HubSpot. Keep an eye on your most important email marketing metrics such as number of sent emails, number of opened emails, open rate, email click-through rate, and more.
• Blog Posts and Landing Pages . How many people have viewed your blog recently? How well are your landing pages performing?

Now you can benefit from the experience of our Google Analytics and HubSpot Marketing experts, who have put together a plug-and-play Databox template that contains all the essential metrics for monitoring your leads. It’s simple to implement and start using as a standalone dashboard or in marketing reports, and best of all, it’s free!

You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.

To set up the dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:

Step 1: Get the template 

Step 2: Connect your HubSpot and Google Analytics 4 accounts with Databox. 

Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.

No one expects you to become an expert executive summary writer overnight. Learning how to create great and meaningful summaries will inevitably take some time.

With the above-mentioned best practices in mind, you should also pay attention to avoiding certain mistakes that could reduce the value of your summaries.

Here are some examples.

Don’t use jargon

Avoid going into details, the summary should be able to stand alone, don’t forget to proofread.

From project stakeholders to C-level executives, everyone should be able to easily understand and read the information you gather in your summary.

Keep in mind, you are probably much more familiar with some of the technical terms that your departments use since you are closer to the daily work and individual tasks than your stakeholders.

Read your summary once again after you finish it to make sure there are no jargons you forgot to elaborate on.

Remember, your summary should be as short as possible, but still include all the key metrics and KPIs. There is no reason to go into details of specific projects, due dates, department performances, etc.

When creating the summary, ask yourself twice whether the information you included truly needs to be there.

Of course, there are certain details that bring value to the summary, but learn how to categorize the useful ones from the unnecessary ones.

While you will know your way around the project, that doesn’t apply to the readers.

After wrapping up the summary, go over it once again to see whether it can stand on its own. This means checking out if there is any sort of context that the readers will need in order to understand the summary.

If the answer is yes, you will have to redo the parts that can’t be understood by first-time readers.

Your executive summary is prone to changes, so making a typo isn’t the end of the world, you can always go back and fix it.

However, it’s not a bad idea to ask one of your colleagues to proofread it as well, just so you have an additional set of eyes.

Using reporting tools such as dashboards for executive reports can provide you with a birds-eye view of your company’s most important KPIs and data.

These dashboards work as visualization tools that will make all the important metrics much more understandable to your internal stakeholders.

Since executive reports on their own don’t include any visual elements such as graphs or charts, these dashboards basically grant them superpowers.

Executive reporting dashboards also make the decision-making process easier since there won’t be any misunderstandings regarding the meaning of the data.

Not only will you be able to gather the data in real-time, but you can also connect different sources onto the dashboard can use the visuals for performance comparisons.

Interested in giving executive report dashboards a try? Let’s check out some of the best examples.

Marketing Performance Dashboard

Customer support performance dashboard, financial overview dashboard, saas management dashboard, sales kpi dashboard.

To stay on top of your key user acquisition metrics, such as visit to leads conversion rates, email traffic, blog traffic, and more, you can use this Marketing Performance Dashboard .

You can pull in data from advanced tools such as HubSpot Marketing and Google Analytics to get a full overview of how your website generates leads.

Some of the things you will learn through this dashboard are:

• Which traffic sources are generating the most amount of leads
• How to track which number of users are new to your website
• How to compare the traffic you are getting from your email with blog traffic
• How to stay on top of lead generation goals each month
• How to be sure that your marketing activities are paying off

The key metrics included are bounce rate, new users, page/session, pageview, and average session duration.

You can use the Customer Support Performance Dashboard to track the overall performance of your customer service and check out how efficient individual agents are.

This simple and customizable dashboard will help you stay in touch with new conversation numbers, open/closed conversations by teammates, number of leads, and much more.

Also, you will get the answers to questions such as:

• How many new conversations did my customer support agents deal with yesterday/last week/last month?
• How many conversations are currently in progress?
• In which way are customer conversations tagged on Intercom?
• How to track the number of leads that the support team is generating?
• What is the best way to measure the performance of my customer support team?

Some of the key metrics are leads, open conversations, new conversations, tags by tag name, closed conversations, and more.

Want to know how much income your business generated last month? How to measure the financial health of your business? How about figuring out the best way to track credit card purchases?

You can track all of these things and more by using the Financial Overview Dashboard .

This free customizable dashboard will help you gain an insight into all of your business’s financial operations, cash flow, bank accounts, sales, expenses, and plenty more.

Understanding your company from a financial standpoint is one of the most important ingredients of good decision-making.

With key metrics such as gross profit, net income, open invoices, total expenses, and dozens more – all gathered in one financial reporting software , you will have no problems staying on top of your financial activities.

Use this SaaS Management Dashboard to have a clear overview of your business’s KPIs in real-time. This customizable dashboard will help you stay competitive in the SaaS industry by providing you with comprehensive data that can you can visualize, making it more understandable.

You will be able to:

• See how your company is growing on an annual basis
• Have a detailed outline of your weakest and strongest months
• Determine which strategies are most efficient in driving revenue

The key metrics included in this dashboard are recurring revenue, churn by type, MRR changes, and customer changes.

Do you want to monitor your sales team’s output and outcomes? Interested in tracking average deal sizes, number of won deals, new deals created, and more?

This Sales KPI Dashboard can help you do just that.

It serves as a perfect tool for sales managers that are looking for the best way to create detailed overviews of their performances. It also helps achieve sales manager goals for the pre-set time periods.

By connecting your HubSpot account to this customizable dashboard, you can learn:

• What’s the average deal size
• The number of open, closed, and lost deals each month
• How much revenue you can expect from the new deals
• How your business is progressing towards the overall sales goals

Although you probably understand what your executive summary should include by now, you may still need a bit of help with creating a clear outline to follow.

We thought about that too. Here are some template examples that will help you create executive summaries for different kinds of business needs.

Here is an executive summary template for a business plan:

• [Company profile (with relevant history)]
• [Company contact details]
• [Description of products and/or services]
• [Unique proposition]
• [Competitive advantage]
• [Intellectual property]
• [Development status]
• [Market opportunity]
• [Target market]
• [Competitors]
• [Funding needs]
• [Potential price of goods]
• [Projected profit margins for year one and two]
• [Summarize main points]

Executive summary template for marketing plan:

• [Product description]
• [Unique customer characteristics]
• [Customer spending habits]
• [Relationship to product]
• [Access channels]
• [Value and credibility of product]
• [Product competitive advantage]
• [Creative outlook]
• [Goal statement]
• [Forecasted cost]
• [Next week]
• [Next month]

Executive summary template for a research report

• [Project topic]
• [Name | Date]
• [Report introduction]
• [Background]
• [Research methods]
• [Conclusions]
• [Recommendations]

Executive summary template for project executive

• [Project name]
• [Program name]
• [Project lead]
• [Prepared by]
• [Project milestones]
• [Status overviews]
• [New requests]
• [Issues summary]
• [Project notes]

For the longest time, writing executive reports has been seen as a grueling and time-consuming process that will require many sleepless nights to get the job done right.

While there is plenty of truth to this, modern automated reporting software has revolutionized these writing nightmares.

Databox is one of those tools.

With Databox, you will be able to connect data from multiple sources into one comprehensive dashboard. Also, you are going to gain access to different types of charts and graphs that you can use for data visualization and make the report much more understandable to the readers.

Using a modernized tool like Databox will provide you with a faster, more accurate, and more efficient reporting process.

This advanced software allows you easily create your own customizable reports that can be adjusted in real-time as soon as new data emerges.

Who says executive reporting has to be a tedious process? Sign up for our free trial and see how easy creating executive reports can be. 

Get practical strategies that drive consistent growth

12 Tips for Developing a Successful Data Analytics Strategy

What Is Data Reporting and How to Create Data Reports for Your Business

What Is KPI Reporting? KPI Report Examples, Tips, and Best Practices

Build your first dashboard in 5 minutes or less

Latest from our blog

• Playmaker Spotlight: Tory Ferrall, Director of Revenue Operations March 27, 2024
• New in Databox: Safeguard Your Data With Advanced Security Settings March 18, 2024
• Metrics & KPIs
• vs. Tableau
• vs. Looker Studio
• vs. Klipfolio
• vs. Power BI
• vs. Whatagraph
• vs. AgencyAnalytics
• Product & Engineering
• Inside Databox
• Terms of Service
• Privacy Policy
• Talent Resources
• We're Hiring!
• Help Center
• API Documentation

Instructions for a Summary of an Annual Report

by Mary Jane

Published on 26 Sep 2017

An annual report is a presentation of a business's financial data. It is often presented in graphs and charts as well as written paragraphs. It is also introduced by a letter from the company's owner or CEO that touches upon financial issues or difficulties the company might have had throughout the financial year, which are discussed in the report. To write a summary of the report, you need to fully understand the data so you can capture all of the main points being presented. The summary highlights these key points so the reader doesn't have to read the entire report.

Remind yourself of the definition of a summary. A summary presents the major elements discussed in the annual report. The goal is to list the key points discussed so the reader doesn't have to dig through the report for information.

Read through the entire annual report so you have a complete idea of what it entails. Do not start writing the summary as you read, as you might highlight the wrong points or leave out crucial details. Make a note every time a new idea or topic is introduced. Read it twice if you have to, and underline each point if necessary.

Compose two or three sentences that explain the purpose of the annual report. For example, write that the report illustrates the financial overview and status of the company and provides investors and shareholders with data about the company's earnings and spending.

Highlight the important points in the CEO's letter that was written as an introduction to the annual report. Interpret the information in the letter and write it in your own words. For example, while the CEO may focus on the positive achievements and barely touch on the negatives, you could mention that the CEO does not want to bring attention to the latter. Explain that the CEO avoids the negatives by highlighting and focusing on positive achievements.

Highlight the results of the important charts or data in the report. For example, instead of focusing on each asset mentioned in the report, add up all of the assets to get a sum. Include the long-term and short-term assets owned by the business. Do the same for the liabilities. The key point is whether the overall assets are greater than the overall liabilities for a positive net worth. Use the individual graphs or assets as examples.

Discuss the overall financial status of the company as presented in the annual report. This status is calculated by dividing the assets by the liabilities. A good status is when the assets are twice as big as the liabilities. Use the individual graphs in the report as examples.

Write a conclusion to the summary. The conclusion highlights the purpose of the annual report. Do not add your own thoughts, but use only the data presented in the report. If the business is not financially stable, use the report's income statements to show how the spending may not be suitable for the company's budget. Use data in the report as evidence to support your interpretive conclusion.

Dear Fellow Shareholders,

Across the globe, 2023 was yet another year of significant challenges, from the terrible ongoing war and violence in the Middle East and Ukraine to mounting terrorist activity and growing geopolitical tensions, importantly with China. Almost all nations felt the effects last year of global economic uncertainty, including higher energy and food prices, inflation rates and volatile markets. While all these events and associated instability have serious ramifications on our company, colleagues, clients and countries where we do business, their consequences on the world at large — with the extreme suffering of the Ukrainian people, escalating tragedy in the Middle East and the potential restructuring of the global order — are far more important.

As these events unfold, America’s global leadership role is being challenged outside by other nations and inside by our polarized electorate. We need to find ways to put aside our differences and work in partnership with other Western nations in the name of democracy. During this time of great crises, uniting to protect our essential freedoms, including free enterprise, is paramount. We should remember that America, “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” still remains a shining beacon of hope to citizens around the world. JPMorgan Chase, a company that historically has worked across borders and boundaries, will do its part to ensure that the global economy is safe and secure.

In spite of the unsettling landscape, including last year’s regional bank turmoil, the U.S. economy continues to be resilient, with consumers still spending, and the markets currently expect a soft landing. It is important to note that the economy is being fueled by large amounts of government deficit spending and past stimulus. There is also a growing need for increased spending as we continue transitioning to a greener economy, restructuring global supply chains, boosting military expenditure and battling rising healthcare costs. This may lead to stickier inflation and higher rates than markets expect. Furthermore, there are downside risks to watch. Quantitative tightening is draining more than $900 billion in liquidity from the system annually — and we have never truly experienced the full effect of quantitative tightening on this scale. Plus the ongoing wars in Ukraine and the Middle East continue to have the potential to disrupt energy and food markets, migration, and military and economic relationships, in addition to their dreadful human cost. These significant and somewhat unprecedented forces cause us to remain cautious.

2023 was another strong year for JPMorgan Chase, with our firm generating record revenue for the sixth consecutive year, as well as setting numerous records in each of our lines of business. We earned revenue in 2023 of $162.4 billion 1 and net income of $49.6 billion, with return on tangible common equity (ROTCE) of 21%, reflecting strong underlying performance across our businesses. We also increased our quarterly common dividend of $1.00 per share to $1.05 per share in the third quarter of 2023 — and again to $1.15 per share in the first quarter of 2024 — while continuing to reinforce our fortress balance sheet. We grew market share in several of our businesses and continued to make significant investments in products, people and technology while exercising strict risk disciplines.

Throughout the year, we demonstrated the power of our investment philosophy and guiding principles, as well as the value of being there for clients — as we always are — in both good times and bad times. The result was continued growth broadly across the firm. We will highlight a few examples from 2023: Consumer & Community Banking (CCB) extended its #1 leadership positions and grew share year-over-year in retail deposits, credit card sales and credit card outstandings (adding close to 3.6 million net new customers to the franchise); the Corporate & Investment Bank (CIB) maintained its #1 rank in both Investment Banking and Markets and gained more than 100 basis points of Investment Banking market share; Commercial Banking (CB) added over 5,000 new relationships (excluding First Republic Bank), roughly doubling the prior year’s achievement; and Asset & Wealth Management (AWM) saw record client asset net inflows of $490 billion, over 20% higher than its prior record.

In 2023, we continued to play a forceful and essential role in advancing economic growth. In total, we extended credit and raised capital totaling $2.3 trillion for our consumer and institutional clients around the world. On a daily basis, we move nearly $10 trillion in over 120 currencies and more than 160 countries, as well as safeguard over $32 trillion in assets. By purchasing First Republic Bank, we brought much-needed stability to the U.S. banking system while allowing us to give a new, secure home to over half a million First Republic customers.

As always, we hold fast to our commitment to corporate responsibility, including helping to create a stronger, more inclusive economy — from supporting work skills training programs around the world to financing affordable housing and small businesses to making investments in cities like Detroit that show how business and government leaders can work together to solve problems.

We have achieved our decades-long consistency by adhering to our key principles and strategies (see sidebar on Steadfast Principles below), which allow us to drive good organic growth and promote proper management of our capital (including dividends and stock buybacks). The charts below show our performance results and illustrate how we have grown our franchises, how we compare with our competitors and how we look at our fortress balance sheet. Please peruse them and the CEO letters in this Annual Report, all of which provide specific details about our businesses and our plans for the future.

STEADFAST PRINCIPLES WORTH REPEATING (AND ONE NEW ONE)

Looking back on the past two+ decades — starting from my time as Chairman and CEO of Bank One in 2000 — there is one common theme: our unwavering dedication to help clients, communities and countries throughout the world. It is clear that our financial discipline, constant investment in innovation and ongoing development of our people have enabled us to achieve this consistency and commitment. In addition, across the firm, we uphold certain steadfast tenets that are worth repeating.

First, our work has very real human impact. While JPMorgan Chase stock is owned by large institutions, pension plans, mutual funds and directly by single investors, in almost all cases the ultimate beneficiaries are individuals in our communities. More than 100 million people in the United States own stocks; many, in one way or another, own JPMorgan Chase stock. Frequently, these shareholders are veterans, teachers, police officers, firefighters, healthcare workers, retirees, or those saving for a home, education or retirement. Often, our employees also bank these shareholders, as well as their families and their companies. Your management team goes to work every day recognizing the enormous responsibility that we have to all of our shareholders.

Second, shareholder value can be built only if you maintain a healthy and vibrant company, which means doing a good job of taking care of your customers, employees and communities. Conversely, how can you have a healthy company if you neglect any of these stakeholders? As we have learned over the past few years, there are myriad ways an institution can demonstrate its compassion for its employees and its communities while still strengthening shareholder value.

Third, while we don’t run the company worrying about the stock price in the short run, in the long run we consider our stock price a measure of our progress over time. This progress is a function of continual investments in our people, systems and products, in good and bad times, to build our capabilities. These important investments will also drive our company’s future prospects and position it to grow and prosper for decades. Measured by stock performance, our progress is exceptional. For example, whether looking back 10 years or even farther to 2004, when the JPMorgan Chase/Bank One merger took place, we have outperformed the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index and the Standard & Poor’s Financials Index.

Fourth, we are united behind basic principles and strategies (you can see the principles for How We Do Business on our website and our Purpose statement in my letter from last year) that have helped build this company and made it thrive. These allow us to maintain a fortress balance sheet, constantly invest and nurture talent, fully satisfy regulators, continually improve risk, governance and controls, and serve customers and clients while lifting up communities worldwide. This philosophy is embedded in our company culture and influences nearly every role in the firm.

Fifth, we strive to build enduring businesses, which rely on and benefit from one another, but we are not a conglomerate. This structure helps generate our superior returns. Nonetheless, despite our best efforts, the walls that protect this company are not particularly high — and we face extraordinary competition. I have written about this reality extensively in the past and cover it again in this letter. We recognize our strengths and vulnerabilities, and we play our hand as best we can.

Sixth, and this is the new one , we must be a source of strength, particularly in tough times, for our clients and the countries in which we operate. We must take seriously our role as one of the guardians of the world’s financial systems.

Seventh, we operate with a very important silent partner — the U.S. government — noting as my friend Warren Buffett points out that his company’s success is predicated upon the extraordinary conditions our country creates. He is right to say to his shareholders that when they see the American flag, they all should say thank you. We should, too. JPMorgan Chase is a healthy and thriving company, and we always want to give back and pay our fair share. We do pay our fair share — and we want it to be spent well and have the greatest impact. To give you an idea of where our taxes and fees go: In the last 10 years, we paid more than $46 billion in federal, state and local taxes in the United States and over $22 billion in taxes outside of the United States. Additionally, we paid the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation over $10 billion so that it has the resources to cover failure in the American banking sector. Our partner — the federal government — also imposes significant regulations upon us, and it is imperative that we meet all legal and regulatory requirements imposed on our company.

Eighth and finally, we know the foundation of our success rests with our people. They are the front line, both individually and as teams, serving our customers and communities, building the technology, making the strategic decisions, managing the risks, determining our investments and driving innovation. However you view the world — its complexity, risks and opportunities — a company’s prosperity requires a great team of people with guts, brains, integrity, enormous capabilities and high standards of professional excellence to ensure its ongoing success.

I remain proud of our company’s resiliency and of what our hundreds of thousands of employees around the world have achieved, collectively and individually. Throughout these challenging past few years, we have never stopped doing all the things we should be doing to serve our clients and our communities. As you know, we are champions of banking’s essential role in a community — its potential for bringing people together, for enabling companies and individuals to attain their goals, and for being a source of strength in difficult times. I often remind our employees that the work we do matters and has impact. United by our principles and purpose, we help people and institutions finance and achieve their aspirations, lifting up individuals, homeowners, small businesses, larger corporations, schools, hospitals, cities and countries in all regions of the world. What we have accomplished in the 20 years since the Bank One and JPMorgan Chase merger is evidence of the importance of our values.

CELEBRATING THE 20TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BANK ONE/JPMORGAN CHASE MERGER

J.P. Morgan Chase

By 2004, J.P. Morgan Chase already represented the consolidation of four of the 10 largest U.S. banks from 1990: The Chase Manhattan Corp., Manufacturers Hanover, Chemical Banking Corp. and, most recently, J.P. Morgan & Company. And some of their predecessor companies stretched back into the 1800s, one even into the late 1700s.

Bank One had been even busier on the acquisition front, especially across the United States. By 1998, then Banc One had more than 1,300 branches in 12 states when it announced a merger with First Chicago NBD, a Chicago-based bank created just three years earlier by the merger of First Chicago and Detroit-based NBD. Now headquartered in Chicago, the new Bank One became the largest bank in the Midwest, second largest among credit card companies and fourth largest in the United States. But the merger didn’t go as planned, with Bank One issuing three different earnings warnings. In March 2000, Bank One reached outside its executive ranks, and my tenure began as Chairman and CEO, working to overhaul the company and help bring it back to profitability and growth.

The story begins ... A merger 20 years ago helped transform two giant banks

Fast forward to 2003, and another wave of consolidation was well underway in U.S. banking. Most of the nation’s larger banks were trying to position themselves to be an “endgame winner.” In the biggest deal, Bank of America agreed to buy FleetBoston Financial Corp. for more than $40 billion. Those two banks — already amalgamations of several predecessor companies — touted the breadth of their combined retail branch network.

But they were hardly alone. In 2003, some 215 deals were announced among U.S. commercial banks and bank holding companies for a total value of $66 billion, according to Thomson Financial, which tracks merger data.

In July 2004, J.P. Morgan Chase and Bank One merged — as part of a 225-year journey — to form this exceptional company of ours: JPMorgan Chase. At its merger in 2004, the combined bank was the fourth largest bank in the world by market capitalization. But with patient groundwork over the years — fixing systems and upgrading technology, managing the notable acquisitions of Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual (WaMu) and continuing to reinvest, including in our talent — we have made our company an endgame winner.

In earlier years, banks worried about their survival. While the past two decades have brought some virtually unprecedented challenges, including the great financial crisis and a pandemic followed by a global shutdown, they did not stop us from accomplishing extraordinary things. Our bank has now emerged as the #1 bank by market capitalization.

Each of our businesses is among the best in the world, with increased market share, strong financial results and an unwavering focus on serving our clients, communities and shareholders with distinction and dedication. The strengths that are embedded in JPMorgan Chase — the knowledge and cohesiveness of our people, our long-standing client relationships, our technology and product capabilities, our presence in more than 100 countries and our unquestionable fortress balance sheet — would be hard to replicate. Crucially, the strength of our company has allowed us to always be there for clients, governments and communities — in good times and in bad times — and this strength has enabled us to continually invest in building our businesses for the future.

You can see from the following charts what gains and improvements we have achieved along the way.

Read footnoted information here

Within this letter, I discuss the following:

I. SUMMARY OF OUR 2023 RESULTS AND THE PRINCIPLES THAT GUIDE US

• Steadfast principles worth repeating (and a new one)
• A timeline of accomplishments
• Financial performance

II. UPDATE ON SPECIFIC ISSUES FACING OUR COMPANY

• The critical impact of artificial intelligence
• Our journey to the cloud
• Acquiring First Republic Bank and its customers
• Navigating in a complex and potentially dangerous world
• What we learned: A five-point action plan to move forward on the climate challenge
• Powering economic growth in Florida
• Giving the bank regulatory and supervisory process a serious review
• Protecting the essential role of market making (trading)

III. STAYING COMPETITIVE IN THE SHRINKING PUBLIC MARKETS

• The pressure of quarterly earnings compounded by bad accounting and bad decisions
• The hijacking of annual shareholder meetings
• The evolving influence of proxy advisors
• The benefits and risks of private credit
• A bank’s strength: Providing flexible capital

IV. MANAGEMENT LESSONS: THINKING, DECIDING AND TAKING ACTION — DELIBERATELY AND WITH HEART

• Benefiting from the OODA loop
• Decision making and acting (have a process)
• The secret sauce of leadership (have a heart)

V. A PIVOTAL MOMENT FOR AMERICA AND THE FREE WESTERN WORLD: STRATEGY AND POLICY MATTER

• Coalescing the Western world — A uniquely American task
• Strengthening our position with a comprehensive, global economic security strategy
• Manager’s Journal: "A Politician's Dream Is A Businessman's Nightmare"
• We should have more faith in the amazing power of our freedoms
• How we can help lift up our low-income citizens and mend America's torn social fabric

Update on Specific Issues Facing Our Company

Each year, I try to update you on some of the most important issues facing our company. First and foremost may well be the impact of artificial intelligence (AI).

While we do not know the full effect or the precise rate at which AI will change our business — or how it will affect society at large — we are completely convinced the consequences will be extraordinary and possibly as transformational as some of the major technological inventions of the past several hundred years: Think the printing press, the steam engine, electricity, computing and the Internet, among others.

THE CRITICAL IMPACT OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Since the firm first started using AI over a decade ago, and its first mention in my 2017 letter to shareholders, we have grown our AI organization materially. It now includes more than 2,000 AI/machine learning (ML) experts and data scientists. We continue to attract some of the best and brightest in this space and have an exceptional firmwide AI/ML and Research department with deep expertise.

We have been actively using predictive AI and ML for years — and now have over 400 use cases in production in areas such as marketing, fraud and risk — and they are increasingly driving real business value across our businesses and functions. We're also exploring the potential that generative AI (GenAI) can unlock across a range of domains, most notably in software engineering, customer service and operations, as well as in general employee productivity. In the future, we envision GenAI helping us reimagine entire business workflows. We will continue to experiment with these AI and ML capabilities and implement solutions in a safe, responsible way.

While we are investing more money in our AI capabilities, many of these projects pay for themselves. Over time, we anticipate that our use of AI has the potential to augment virtually every job, as well as impact our workforce composition. It may reduce certain job categories or roles, but it may create others as well. As we have in the past, we will aggressively retrain and redeploy our talent to make sure we are taking care of our employees if they are affected by this trend.

Finally, as a global leader across businesses and regions, we have large amounts of extraordinarily rich data that, together with AI, can fuel better insights and help us improve how we manage risk and serve our customers. In addition to making sure our data is high quality and easily accessible, we need to complete the migration of our analytical data estate to the public cloud. These new data platforms offer high-performance compute power, which will unlock our ability to use our data in ways that are hard to contemplate today.

Recognizing the importance of AI to our business, we created a new position called Chief Data & Analytics Officer that sits on our Operating Committee.

Elevating this new role to the Operating Committee level — reporting directly to Daniel Pinto and me — reflects how critical this function will be going forward and how seriously we expect AI to influence our business. This will embed data and analytics into our decision making at every level of the company. The primary focus is not just on the technical aspects of AI but also on how all management can — and should — use it. Each of our lines of business has corresponding data and analytics roles so we can share best practices, develop reusable solutions that solve multiple business problems, and continuously learn and improve as the future of AI unfolds.

Clearly, AI comes with many risks, which need to be rigorously managed.

We have a robust, well-established risk and control framework that helps us proactively stay in front of AI-related risks, particularly as the regulatory landscape evolves. And we will, of course, continue to work hard with our regulators, clients and subject matter experts to make sure we maintain the highest ethical standards and are transparent in how AI helps us make decisions; e.g., to counter bias among other things.

You may already be aware that there are bad actors using AI to try to infiltrate companies’ systems to steal money and intellectual property or simply to cause disruption and damage. For our part, we incorporate AI into our toolset to counter these threats and proactively detect and mitigate their efforts.

OUR JOURNEY TO THE CLOUD

Getting our technology to the cloud — whether the public cloud or the private cloud — is essential to fully maximize all of our capabilities, including the power of our data. The cloud offers many benefits: 1) it accelerates the speed of delivery of new services; 2) it simultaneously reduces the cost of compute power and enables, when needed, an extraordinary amount of compute capability — called burst computing; 3) it provides that compute capability across all of our data; and 4) it allows us to be able to constantly and quickly adopt new technologies because updated cloud services are continually being added — more so in the public cloud, where we benefit from the innovation that all cloud providers create, than in the private cloud, where innovation is only our own.

Of course, we are learning a lot along the way. For example, we know we should carefully pick which applications and which data go to the public cloud versus the private cloud because of the expense, security and capabilities required. In addition, it is critical that we eventually use multiple clouds to avoid lock-in. And we intend to maintain our own expertise so that we’re never reliant on the expertise of others even if that requires additional money.

We invested approximately $2 billion to build four new, modern, private cloud-based, highly reliable and efficient data centers in the United States (we have 32 data centers globally). To date, about 50% of our applications run a large part of their processing in the public or private cloud. Approximately 70% of our data is now running in the public or private cloud. By the end of 2024, we aim to have 70% of applications and 75% of data moved to the public or private cloud. The new data centers are around 30% more efficient than our existing legacy data centers. Going to the public cloud can provide 30% additional efficiency if done correctly (efficiency improves when your data and applications have been modified, or “refactored,” to enable new cloud services). We have been constantly updating most of our global data centers, and by the end of this year, we can start closing some that are larger, older and less efficient.

ACQUIRING FIRST REPUBLIC BANK AND ITS CUSTOMERS

The purchase of First Republic Bank was not something that we would have done just for ourselves. But the regulators relied on us to step forward (we worked hand in hand with the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the U.S. Treasury), and the purchase of First Republic helped stabilize and strengthen the U.S. financial system in a time of crisis.

The acquisition of a major company entails a lot of complexity. People tend to focus on the financial and economic outcomes, which is a reasonable thing to do. And in the case of First Republic, the numbers look rather good. We recorded an accounting gain of $3 billion on the purchase , and we told the world we expected to add more than $500 million to earnings annually, which we now believe will be closer to $2 billion. However, these results mask some of the true costs. First, approximately one-third of the incremental earning was simply deploying excess capital and liquidity, which doesn’t require purchasing a $300 billion bank — we simply could have bought $300 billion of assets. Second, as soon as the deal was announced, approximately 7,600 of our employees went from working on tasks that would benefit the future of JPMorgan Chase to working on the merger integration. Overall, the integration involves effectively combining more than 165 systems (e.g., statement, deposit, accounting and human resources) and consolidating policies, risk reporting, and other various rules and procedures. We hope to have most of the integration done by the middle of 2024.

Fortunately, we were very familiar and comfortable with all of the assets we were acquiring from First Republic. What we didn’t take on was First Republic’s excessive interest rate exposure — one of the reasons it failed — which we effectively hedged within days of the acquisition.

Our people did a great job of respectfully managing this transition, knowing that circumstances were particularly tough for our new colleagues, whom we tried to welcome with open arms. We did everything we could to redeploy individuals whose jobs were lost because of the merger (we directly hired over 5,000 people). Our approach has always been to go into an acquisition knowing we can learn things from other teams, and in this case, we did: First Republic had done an outstanding job serving high-net-worth clients and venture capitalists, and we are developing what is effectively a new business for us following First Republic’s servicing model. We will serve these high-net-worth clients through a single point of contact, supported by a concierge service model, across our distribution channels — including more than 20 new JPMorgan Chase branded branches.

NAVIGATING IN A COMPLEX AND POTENTIALLY DANGEROUS WORLD

In the policy section, we talk about how we may be entering one of the most treacherous geopolitical eras since World War II. And I have written in the past about high levels of debt, fiscal stimulus, ongoing deficit spending and the unknown effects of quantitative tightening (which I am more worried about than most) so I won’t repeat those views here. However, the impacts of these geopolitical and economic forces are large and somewhat unprecedented; they may not be fully understood until they have completely played out over multiple years. In any case, JPMorgan Chase must be prepared for the various potential impacts and outcomes on our company and our people.

We remain wary of economic prognosticating.

While all companies essentially budget on a base case forecast, we are very careful not to run our business that way. Instead, we look at a range of potential outcomes for which we need to be prepared. Geopolitical and economic forces have an unpredictable timetable — they may unfold over months, or years, and are nearly impossible to put into a one-year forecast. They also have an unpredictable interplay: For example, the geopolitical situation may end up having virtually no effect on the world’s economy or it could potentially be its determinative factor.

We have ongoing concerns about persistent inflationary pressures and consider a wide range of outcomes to manage interest rate exposure and other business risks.

Many key economic indicators today continue to be good and possibly improving, including inflation. But when looking ahead to tomorrow , conditions that will affect the future should be considered. For example, there seems to be a large number of persistent inflationary pressures, which may likely continue. All of the following factors appear to be inflationary: ongoing fiscal spending, remilitarization of the world, restructuring of global trade, capital needs of the new green economy, and possibly higher energy costs in the future (even though there currently is an oversupply of gas and plentiful spare capacity in oil) due to a lack of needed investment in the energy infrastructure. In the past, fiscal deficits did not seem to be closely related to inflation. In the 1970s and early 1980s, there was a general understanding that inflation was driven by “guns and butter”; i.e., fiscal deficits and the increase to the money supply, both partially driven by the Vietnam War, led to increased inflation, which went over 10%. The deficits today are even larger and occurring in boom times — not as the result of a recession — and they have been supported by quantitative easing, which was never done before the great financial crisis. Quantitative easing is a form of increasing the money supply (though it has many offsets). I remain more concerned about quantitative easing than most, and its reversal, which has never been done before at this scale.

Equity values, by most measures, are at the high end of the valuation range, and credit spreads are extremely tight. These markets seem to be pricing in at a 70% to 80% chance of a soft landing — modest growth along with declining inflation and interest rates. I believe the odds are a lot lower than that. In the meantime, there seems to be an enormous focus, too much so, on monthly inflation data and modest changes to interest rates. But the die may be cast — interest rates looking out a year or two may be predetermined by all of the factors I mentioned above. Small changes in interest rates today may have less impact on inflation in the future than many people believe.

Therefore, we are prepared for a very broad range of interest rates, from 2% to 8% or even more, with equally wide-ranging economic outcomes — from strong economic growth with moderate inflation (in this case, higher interest rates would result from higher demand for capital) to a recession with inflation; i.e., stagflation. Economically, the worst-case scenario would be stagflation, which would not only come with higher interest rates but also with higher credit losses, lower business volumes and more difficult markets. Under these many different scenarios, our company would continue to perform at least okay. Importantly, being prepared means we can continue to help our clients no matter what the future portends.

The mini banking crisis of 2023 is over, but beware of higher rates and recession — not just for banks but for the whole economy.

When we purchased First Republic in May 2023 following the failure of two other regional banks, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bank, we thought that the current banking crisis was over. Only these three banks were offsides in having the toxic combination of extreme interest rate exposure, large unrealized losses in the held-to-maturity (HTM) portfolio and highly concentrated deposits. Most of the other regional banks did not have these problems. However, we stipulated that the crisis was over provided that interest rates didn’t go up dramatically and we didn’t experience a serious recession. If long-end rates go up over 6% and this increase is accompanied by a recession, there will be plenty of stress — not just in the banking system but with leveraged companies and others. Remember, a simple 2 percentage point increase in rates essentially reduced the value of most financial assets by 20%, and certain real estate assets, specifically office real estate, may be worth even less due to the effects of recession and higher vacancies. Also remember that credit spreads tend to widen, sometimes dramatically, in a recession.

We seek to be engaged globally and carefully manage complex countries and geopolitical issues.

JPMorgan Chase does business in more than 100 countries, and we have people on the ground in over 60 countries. In almost all those locations, we do research on their economy, their markets and their companies; we bank their government institutions and their companies; and we bank multinational corporations, including the U.S. multinational corporations within their borders. This is a critical role — not only in helping those countries grow and improve but also in expanding the global economy.

Many of these countries are quite complex with different laws, customs and regulations. We are occasionally asked why we bank certain companies and even certain countries, particularly when countries have some laws and customs that are counter to many of the values held in the United States. Here’s why:

• The U.S. government sets foreign policy. And when it does, we salute. Wherever we do business, we follow the law of the United States, as it applies in that country (in addition to the laws of the country itself), in all respects. Think of trade rules, sanctions, anti-money laundering and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, among others. By and large, these things help improve those countries. In most cases, the U.S. government does not want us to leave because it agrees, generally, that the engagement of American business enhances our relationships with other countries and helps those countries themselves.
• Engagement makes the world a better place. We all should want the world to continue to improve. Isolation and lack of engagement do not accomplish that goal. While we believe that it makes sense for the United States to push for constant improvement around the world — from advocating for human rights to fighting corruption — this is rarely accomplished through coercion, and, in fact, is enhanced by engagement.
• We need to be prepared for emerging challenges and position ourselves to understand them. We created a new role — Head of Asia Pacific Policy and Strategic Competitiveness — to focus specifically on key policy issues critical to the firm’s (and, in fact, the country’s) competitiveness, such as trade restrictions, supply chains and infrastructure. We also created a new strategic security forum to focus on emerging and evolving risks, including trade wars, pandemics, cybersecurity and actual wars, to name just a few.

OUR EXTENSIVE COMMUNITY OUTREACH EFFORTS, INCLUDING DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION

JPMorgan Chase makes an extraordinary effort as part of our “normal” day-to-day outreach to engage with individual clients, small and midsized businesses, large and multinational firms, government officials, regulators and the press in cities all around the world. This dialogue is part of the normal course of business but it is also part of building trust and putting down roots in a community.

We believe that companies, and banks in particular, must earn the trust of the communities and countries in which they operate. We believe — and we are unashamed about this — that it is our obligation to help lift up the communities and countries in which we do business. We believe that doing so enhances business and the general economic well-being of those communities and countries and also enhances long-term shareholder value. JPMorgan Chase thrives when communities thrive.

This approach is integral to what we do, in great scale, around the world — and it works. We are quite clear that whether our efforts are inspired by the goodness of our hearts (as philanthropy or venture-type investing) or good business, we try to measure the actual outcomes.

It’s also interesting to point out that many of our efforts were spawned from our work around Advancing Black Pathways, Military and Veterans Affairs, and our work in Detroit. While we’ve banked Detroit for more than 90 years, our $200 million investment in its economic recovery over the last decade demonstrated that investing in communities is a smart business strategy. We are one of the largest banks in Detroit, from consumer banking to investment banking, and it’s quite clear that not only did our efforts help Detroit, but they also helped us gain market share. The extent of Detroit’s remarkable recovery was recently highlighted when Moody’s upgraded the city’s credit rating to investment grade — an extraordinary achievement just over 10 years after the city filed the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history.

For JPMorgan Chase, Detroit was an incubator for developing models that help us hone how we deploy our business resources, philanthropic capital, skilled volunteerism, and low-cost loans and equity investments, as well as how we identify top talent to drive successful business and societal improvements. I hope that, as shareholders, you are proud of our focus on promoting opportunity for all, both within and outside our organization, which includes economic opportunity. Some of our initiatives are listed below.

• Business Resource Groups. To deepen our culture of inclusion in the workplace, we have 10 Business Resource Groups (BRG) across the company to connect more than 160,000 participating employees around common interests, as well as to foster networking and camaraderie. Groups welcome anyone — allies and those with shared affinities alike. For example, some of our largest BRGs are Access Ability (employees with disabilities and caregivers), Adelante (Hispanic and Latino employees), BOLD (Black employees), NextGen (early career professionals), PRIDE (LGBTQ+ employees) and Women on the Move.
• Women on the Move. At JPMorgan Chase, they sure are! Women represent 28% of our firm’s senior leadership globally. In fact, our major lines of business — CCB, AWM and CIB, which would be among Fortune 1000 companies on their own — are all run by women (one with a co-head who is male). More than 10 years ago, a handful of senior women at the company, on their own, started this global, firmwide, internally focused organization called Women on the Move. It was so successful that we expanded the initiative beyond the company; it now empowers clients and consumers, as well as women employees and their allies, to build their careers, grow their businesses and improve their financial health. The Women on the Move BRG has more than 70,000 employees globally.
• Advancing Black Pathways. This comprehensive program, which just reached the five-year mark, focuses on strengthening the economic foundation of Black communities because we know that opportunity is not always created equally. The program does so by, among other accomplishments, helping to diversify our talent pipeline, providing opportunities for Black individuals to enter the workforce and gain valuable experience, and investing in the financial success of Black Americans through a focus on financial health, homeownership and entrepreneurship. An important part of the program’s work is achieved through our investment in Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU). We now partner with 18 schools across the United States to boost recruitment connections, expand career pathways for Black students and other students, and support their long-term development and financial health. As a measure of the program’s success, in four years we have made nearly 400 hires into summer and full-time analyst and associate roles at the firm.
• Military and Veterans Affairs. This firmwide effort sponsors recruitment, mentorship and development programs to support the military members and veterans working at JPMorgan Chase. Back in 2011, we joined with 10 other companies to launch the Veteran Jobs Mission (VJM), whose membership has since grown to more than 300 companies representing various industries across the United States and has hired over 900,000 veterans and military spouses. In 2023, VJM announced the creation of its Advisory Board, which is composed of 14 corporate leaders, to provide strategic direction and oversight of VJM as it continues to expand its commitment to support economic opportunities for veterans and military spouses, including its goal to hire 2 million veterans and 200,000 military spouses by 2030. JPMorgan Chase alone has hired in excess of 18,000 veterans since 2011 and currently employs more than 3,100 military spouses.
• Creating opportunity for people with disabilities. The firm’s Office of Disability Inclusion continues to lead strategy and initiatives aimed at advancing economic opportunity for people with disabilities. In 2023, we joined lawmakers and business leaders in Washington, D.C., to show support for passage of the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) Savings Penalty Elimination Act. Modernizing the SSI program, by updating asset limits for the first time in nearly 40 years, would allow millions of people with disabilities who receive SSI benefits the opportunity to build their savings without putting their essential benefits at risk. We also provided business coaching to more than 370 entrepreneurs with disabilities.
• Virtual call centers. When we sought to expand our customer service specialists program across the United States, we turned to Detroit, launching our first virtual call center in 2022. Investments in Detroit’s workforce development infrastructure helped us hire 90 virtual customer service specialists for a program that has outperformed many of our traditional call centers around the world. Following this success, we expanded our hiring efforts and this virtual program to Baltimore to create new jobs that jump-start careers. And now we’re evaluating the possibility of expanding even further.
• Entrepreneurs of Color Fund. A critical challenge we have seen in so many communities is that traditional lending standards render too many entrepreneurs — particularly entrepreneurs of color and those serving these communities — ineligible for credit. In response, we helped launch the Entrepreneurs of Color Fund (EOCF) in Detroit, a lending program designed to help aspiring small business owners gain access to critical resources needed for growth that are often not equitably available — capital, technical assistance and mentorship, among others. These challenges aren’t unique to Detroit so we worked with community development financial institutions to replicate the EOCF program in 10 markets across the United States in 2023, deploying more than 2,900 loans and $176 million in capital to underserved entrepreneurs across the country.
• Senior business consultants. To help entrepreneurs and small businesses make the transition from community lending to accessing capital from traditional financial institutions, we created a new job — senior business consultant — to provide support. Senior business consultants in branches that focus on underserved communities offer coaching and help business owners with everything from navigating access to credit to managing cash flow to generating effective marketing. Since 2020, these consultants have mentored more than 5,500 business owners, helping them improve their operations, grow revenue and network with others in the local business community.
• Advancing Cities The organizing principles that define the business and community investments we make and how we best achieve an overall impact in local economies were heavily influenced by our experience in Detroit. Seeing Detroit’s comeback begin to take shape several years ago, we created Advancing Cities to replicate this model for large-scale investments to other cities around the world. From San Francisco to Paris to Greater Washington, D.C., we’ve applied what we learned in Detroit to communities where conditions are opportune for success and require deeper investments — where community, civic and business leaders have come together to solve problems and get results.
• JPMorgan Chase Service Corps. Ten years ago, we launched the JPMorgan Chase Service Corps to strengthen the capacity-building of nonprofit partners. We brought employees from around the world to Detroit to assist with its recovery — from creating a scoring model for a nonprofit to helping prioritize neighborhoods for development funding to devising an implementation plan for an integrated talent management system. Since that time, the Service Corps has expanded, with more than 1,500 JPMorgan Chase employees contributing 100,000 hours to support over 300 nonprofits globally.
• Community Centers/Branches and Community Managers. A local bank branch, especially in a low-income neighborhood, can be successful only when it fits the community’s needs. That is why over the last several years we have shifted our approach to how we offer access to financial health education, as well as low-cost products and services to help build wealth. Since 2019, we have opened 16 Community Center branches, often in areas with larger Black, Hispanic or Latino populations, and have plans to open three more by the end of 2024. These branches have more space to host grassroots community events, small business mentoring sessions and financial health seminars, which have been well-attended — to date, over 400,000 people have taken advantage of the financial education seminars. In each of these Community Center branches, we hired a Community Manager (who acts as a local ambassador) to build relationships with community leaders, nonprofits and small businesses. The Community Manager concept and practice have become so successful that we have also placed these managers in many of our traditional branches in underserved communities. We now have 149 Community Managers throughout our branch network.
• Work skills development. Detroit showed us how talent in communities is often overlooked. We saw this in the early days of our investment when we visited our partners at Focus: HOPE, a training program designed to help Detroiters develop skills for high-demand jobs. Quickly, it became clear that the training and education system in Detroit was disconnected from employers and their talent needs. By investing in programs like Focus: HOPE, we have been able to help bridge local skills gaps by training people for in-demand jobs in communities like Dallas, Miami and Washington, D.C. Between 2019 and 2023, we supported more than 2 million people through our extensive learning and career programming around the world.
• Increasing our rural investment. We are proud to be the only bank with branches in all 48 contiguous states, which include many rural communities. Nearly 17 million consumers living in rural areas hold over $100 billion in deposits with us and $175 billion in loans. We are also a leading wholesale lender in these communities, helping to fuel local economies through relationships with local companies, governments, hospitals and universities. Since 2019, we have made material progress in extending our footprint to reach more rural Americans, including expanding our branch network into 13 new states with large rural populations. Now we are raising the bar. With our new strategy, we have a goal to have a branch available to serve 50% of a state’s population within an acceptable driving distance, including in heavily rural states such as Alabama and Iowa. This focus is part of our recently announced plan to build an additional 500 branches and hire 3,500 employees over the next three years. Through this expansion, we will partner across lines of business and our Corporate Responsibility organization to help advance inclusive economic growth and bring the full force of the firm to America’s heartland.

We’ve nearly completed our five-year, $30 billion Racial Equity Commitment — it will now become a permanent part of our business.

What began in 2020 as a five-year, $30 billion commitment is now transforming into a consistent business practice for our lines of business in support of Black, Hispanic, Latino and other underserved communities. By the end of 2023, we reported over $30 billion in progress toward our original goal. However, our focus is not on how much money is deployed — but on long-term impact and outcomes. And going forward, these programs will be embedded in our business-as-usual operating system.

• Affordable rental housing. Through our Affordable Housing Preservation program, we approved program funding to date of approximately $21 billion in loans to incentivize the preservation of over 190,000 affordable housing rental units across the United States. Additionally, we financed approximately $5 billion for the construction and rehabilitation of affordable rental housing.
• Homeownership. In 2023, we expanded our $5,000 Chase Homebuyer Grant program to include over 15,000 majority Black, Hispanic and Latino communities — and in January 2024, we increased our grant amount to $7,500 in select markets. Since our grant program began in 2021, we have provided about 8,600 grants totaling $43 million. We also have provided home purchase and refinance loans in 2023 worth over $4.6 billion for more than 14,000 Black, Hispanic and Latino households across the economic spectrum.
• Small business. The Business Card Special Purpose Credit Program, launched in January 2023, has provided over 10,900 cards, totaling over $43 million in available credit lines to underserved entrepreneurs and communities across the United States.
• Supplier diversity. In 2023, our firm spent approximately $2.3 billion directly with diverse suppliers — an increase of 10% over 2022. As a part of our racial equity commitment, over $450 million was spent in 2023 with more than 190 Black-, Hispanic- and Latino-owned businesses.
• Minority depository institutions and community development financial institutions. To date, we have invested more than $110 million in equity in diverse financial institutions and provided over $260 million in incremental financing to community development financial institutions to support communities that lack access to traditional financing. JPMorgan Chase also helped these institutions build their capacity so they can provide a greater number of critical services like mortgages and small business loans.

We’re thoughtfully continuing our diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

Of course, JPMorgan Chase will conform as the laws evolve. We will scour our programs, our words and our actions to make sure they comply.

That said, we think all the efforts mentioned above will remain largely unchanged. And, in fact, around the world, cities and communities where we do business applaud these efforts. We also believe our initiatives make us a more inclusive company and lead to more innovation, smarter decisions and better financial results for us and for the economy overall.

We are often asked in particular about “equity” and what that word means. To us, it means equal treatment, equal opportunity and equal access … not equal outcomes. There is nothing wrong with acknowledging and trying to bridge social and economic gaps, whether they be around wealth or health. We would like to provide a fair chance for everyone to succeed — regardless of their background. And we want to make sure everyone who works at our company feels welcome.

We want to articulate how we weigh in on social issues and what it means for our customers.

Before I comment about culture issues, I have a confession to make: I am a full-throated, red-blooded, patriotic, free-enterprise (properly regulated, of course) and free-market capitalist. Our company is frequently asked to take a position on an issue, rule or legislation that might be considered “cultural.” When that happens, we take a deep breath and study the matter. Many of the laws in question have many specific requirements, some of which you would agree with but not others. But we are being asked to support the entire law. In cases like these, we simply make our own statement that reflects our educated view and values; however, we do not give our voice to others.

We believe in the values of democracy, including freedom of speech and expression, and are staunchly against discrimination and hate. We have not turned away — and will not turn away — customers because of their political or religious affiliations nor would we tell customers how they should spend their money.

Our commitment to these ideals is also reflected in our employees. The talent at our firm is a vibrant mix of cultures, beliefs and backgrounds. We are, of course, fully committed to freedom of speech. There are things that you can say that would be permitted under freedom of speech but would not be allowed under our Code of Conduct. For example, we do not allow intimidation, threats or highly prejudicial behavior or speech. Our Code of Conduct clearly stipulates that certain statements and behavior, while allowed under freedom of speech, can lead to disciplinary action at our company — from being reprimanded to being fired.

WHAT WE LEARNED: A FIVE-POINT ACTION PLAN TO MOVE FORWARD ON THE CLIMATE CHALLENGE

In May 2023, we gathered with knowledgeable and influential people from the energy industry writ large to the government and financial services arena in Scottsdale, Arizona, for an action forum. The goal was to explore various aspects of the climate challenge and try to devise effective solutions that could help lead to meaningful progress. The climate challenge is immense and complex. Addressing it requires more than making simplistic statements and rules; rather, energy systems and global supply chains need to be transformed across virtually all industries. And there is also a deep need for new research and development. Energy systems and supply chains provide the foundation of the global economy and must be treated with care.

At the same time, the opportunity here is immense. The investment required to meet climate goals — estimated at over $5 trillion annually — could generate economywide growth and opportunity at a scale the world has not seen since the Industrial Revolution.

The task for industry, policymakers and finance is to help formulate solutions that support the transition to a low-carbon economy, balancing affordable, reliable access to energy with generating economic growth.

To find a way forward, we sought input from diverse stakeholders in pursuit of a North Star. In Scottsdale and in discussions with clients across industries about what’s needed to achieve a low-carbon economy, these five action steps and reforms were top of mind:

• Supportive government policy and leadership to advance the transition. Policy that promotes favorable economic conditions to make the transition viable is a critical first step for clients. This includes government leadership via mandates, incentives or subsidies to support jobs and investment in the transition; actions on permitting and interconnection reform; and regulatory clarity and certainty, especially around long-term investments. As one vital example, current grid infrastructure is insufficient to accommodate the growth in renewables.
• Public/private partnerships in scaling bankable projects. Scaling investments needs to happen both for commercially proven technologies (e.g., wind and solar) and for emerging technologies (e.g., green hydrogen, sustainable aviation fuel and carbon capture). Developing “bankable” clean energy projects will require the application of smart financial tools, as well as further policy support. It will take public/private partnerships and innovation to create catalytic forms of capital that can step into these gaps, absorb first-mover risks and provide the necessary funding. The cost of capital is too high for some companies — and public funds ought to be deployed in a smart way that effectively attracts private capital.
• Public education and engagement. Without question, clients told us that public commitment to and investment in energy-related infrastructure is one of the most important parts of combating the climate crisis and running their businesses. Supporting the buildout of energy-related infrastructure with speed and scale is critical. Public acceptance of building and advancing the infrastructure needed to meet climate goals is at the heart of progress. While the energy transition is poised to deliver benefits to communities across the world, securing acceptance and support to build clean energy infrastructure at scale is challenging. Access to job-creating renewable energy projects can help rural communities thrive by advancing local economies. Ensuring public support and social license to operate requires better engagement strategies, including widespread stakeholder education about the benefits of these technologies for local communities.
• Communication about concrete successes. Across industries, market participants need to do a better job of celebrating and championing concrete successes and tangible milestones. This includes highlighting success stories around emerging technologies and the complex nature of the carbon transition. Stakeholders also should better convey the benefits of clean energy — across all technologies — to help combat misinformation and foster a more informed dialogue.
• Work skills training. Businesses depend on healthy, thriving communities so the carbon transition needs to work for everyone. This includes helping to ensure that workers are trained in the skills for the future, such as through improved engineering schools and job training programs. Work across the entire supply chain is essential to moving at pace. As one example, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates we will need more than 70,000 additional electricians per year through 2031; it is currently unclear how the market will meet that demand. If the deployment of heat pumps and electric vehicle chargers accelerates, demand for electricians will be even higher. A concerted focus to train electricians can help the United States meet some of its climate goals while providing well-paying jobs that do not require a four-year college degree. Also, broadly speaking, businesses are in a better position to make investments with confidence when labor requirements across the value chain — from design and manufacturing to installation — are satisfied.

We recently reconsidered certain memberships.

JPMorgan Chase recently exited Climate Action 100+ and the Equator Principles. “Why?” we are asked. While we don’t necessarily disagree with some of the principles many organizations have, we make our own business decisions. We think we have some of the best-in-class environmental, social and risk standards because we have invested in our own in-house experts and matured our own risk management processes over the years. As a result, we are going to go our own way and make our own independent decisions, gathering the best learnings of experts in the field, and, of course, we will follow all legal requirements.

We are engaged but recognize our role: three more important points.

First, everyone should understand that conquering the climate problem needs proper government action, particularly around taxes, permitting, grids, infrastructure building and proper coordination of policies — we are not there yet. Second, there is no known technology that can fill the gap between our “aspirations” and the current trajectory of the world. We hope and believe that this will be found (for example, through carbon capture, improved batteries, hydrogen or other measures). This new technology will also require proper government research and development funding, as the effort cannot be accomplished by private enterprise alone. And third, we are going to use the word “commitment” much more reservedly in the future, clearly differentiating between aspirations we are actively striving toward and binding commitments.

For JPMorgan Chase to play the right role in tackling the climate challenge, we have organized a special group around the green economy and related infrastructure investment. This group will coordinate and inform our work across all established industry groups (from auto to real estate, energy, agriculture and others) and includes hundreds of employees devoted to these efforts.

POWERING ECONOMIC GROWTH IN FLORIDA

From Tallahassee to Miami and from Tampa to Palm Bay, JPMorgan Chase has been committed to Florida for more than 130 years and has enjoyed being the bank for all communities. Each year, we contribute billions of dollars to the economy, hire and train local residents, help to revitalize neighborhoods and remove barriers to opportunity for Floridians across the state. Our partnerships with businesses, nonprofits, government entities and community organizations have enabled us to drive sustainable impact and help them achieve their goals. We couldn’t be more proud to help make opportunity happen in Florida.

This year, we forged a relationship with Inter Miami CF, one of the most recognizable sports teams in the world. Through this partnership and the newly named Chase Stadium, we’re continuing to contribute to South Florida and its local communities. In Tampa, home to nearly 6,000 of our employees, we’re triggering an additional $210 million in economic activity and creating over 660 local construction jobs through the renovation of our Highland Oaks campus and downtown Tampa office. We’re proud that one-third of all Floridians do business with us through deposits, credit cards or a mortgage. Through each of our investments across the state, we’re ensuring that residents have the resources and tools they need to thrive.

Our support to government, higher education, healthcare and nonprofit organizations:

• We serve over 150 government, higher education, healthcare and nonprofit clients throughout the state, and over the last five years, we have provided more than $20.2 billion in credit and capital to them.
• Our clients range from the city of Jacksonville to the Orlando Utilities Commission, the University of South Florida, Broward Health and the District School Board of Pasco County — a decades-long client.
• We are the lead treasury bank for the Wounded Warrior Project, one of the largest veteran service organizations in the United States. Headquartered in Jacksonville, the organization caters to wounded veterans and service members who served in the military on or after 9/11.

Our support to investment and middle-market banking clients:

• Over the last five years, we have provided in excess of $318 billion in credit and capital to local clients, such as utility, technology and tourism companies.
• We have more than 12,500 large and midsized clients across the state.

Our support to local financial firms:

• Over the last five years, we have provided more than $24 billion in credit and capital for financial institutions, such as local banks, insurance companies, asset managers and securities firms.
• We bank over 50 of Florida’s regional, midsized and community banks, helping them play an essential role in maintaining the state’s economy and serve local communities.

Our support to small business:

• At the end of 2023, balances for loans extended to Florida’s small businesses totaled more than $1.2 billion — funds being used to help those businesses scale and grow, contribute to the economy and create local jobs.
• Across the state, we have over 654,000 small business customers.
• In 2023, our bankers and senior business consultants spent more than 375,000 hours advising and supporting Florida business owners.

Our support to consumer banking needs:

• We operate 1,445 ATMs and 410 branches across the state.
• In 2023, we supported more than 6.1 million customers with mortgages, auto loans and savings, checking and credit card accounts, giving JPMorgan Chase one of the largest consumer banking market shares in the state.
• We managed more than $70 billion in investment and annuity assets for local clients.

Our business and community investments:

• $3 million to The Miami Foundation’s Resilient 305: Building Prosperity Collaborative to increase access to quality jobs and develop small businesses through training, investments and capacity-building.
• $1.6 million to the Community Justice Project, which empowers community-based legal advocates to help delay displacement and improve conditions for housing stability for renters across nine Florida counties.
• A $1 million investment to Florida Memorial University, South Florida’s only HBCU, to help traditionally underresourced students pursue a career in technology.

Our support as a local employer:

• We employ more than 14,000 residents throughout the state, including nearly 1,900 veterans and over 660 people with a criminal background who deserve a second chance.
• In Florida, the average salary of our employees is more than $87,000 (plus a starting comprehensive annual benefits package worth nearly $17,600) compared with the statewide per capita income of nearly $40,300.

GIVING THE BANK REGULATORY AND SUPERVISORY PROCESS A SERIOUS REVIEW

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank) was finished 14 years ago, and we believe it accomplished a lot of good things. But it’s been quite a while since then, and we’re still debating some very basic issues. It’s time to take a serious, hard, honest look at what has been done and what can be improved.

It’s good to remember that the United States has the best financial system in the world, with diversified, deep and experienced institutions, from banks, pension plans, hedge funds and private equity to individual investors. It has healthy public and private markets, transparency, rule of law and deep research. The best banking system in the world is a critical part of this, and, integrated with the overall financial system, is foundational to the proper allocation of capital, innovation and the fueling of America’s growth engine.

This is not about JPMorgan Chase — we believe we can manage through whatever is thrown our way. This is about the impact on all parts of the system — from smaller banks to larger regional banks that may not have the resources to handle all of these regulatory requirements. It’s also about the effect on the financial markets and the economy from the rapidly growing shadow banking system, as well as the ultimate impact on the customers, clients and communities we serve. This is about what’s right for the system.

The banking and financial system is innovative, dynamic and constantly changing.

The banking system is not static: There are startup banks, mergers, successful upstarts and fintech banks, and even Apple, which effectively acts as a bank — it holds money, moves money, lends money and so on. Nonbanks are competing with traditional banks, and, in general, this dynamism and churn are good for innovation and invention — with success and failure simply part of the robust process. Innovation runs across payments systems, budgeting, digital access, product extensions, risk and fraud prevention, and other services. Different institutions play different roles, and, importantly, small banks and big banks serve completely different strategic functions. Large banks bank multinational corporations around the world, make healthy markets, and wield technology and a product set that are the best in the world. A small bank simply cannot bank these same multinational governments and safely move the amount of money and securities that large banks do. Regional and community banks have exceptional local knowledge and presence and are critical in serving thousands of towns and certain geographies.

It is also important to recognize that the banking system as we know it is shrinking relative to private markets and fintech, which are growing and becoming increasingly competitive. And remember that many of these new players do not have the same transparency or need to abide by the extensive rules and regulations as traditional banks, even if they offer similar products — this often gives them significant advantage.

To deal with this fluid environment, banks of all sizes develop their own strategies, whether to specialize, expand geographically or embark on mergers and acquisitions. There are certain banking services where economies of scale are a competitive advantage, but not all banks need to become bigger to gain this benefit (there are many highly successful banks that are smaller). What is clear is that banks should be allowed to pursue their individual strategies, including mergers and acquisitions, as they see fit. Overall, this process should be allowed to happen — it’s part of the natural and healthy course of capitalism — and it can be done without harming the American taxpayer or economy.

While we all want a strong banking and financial system, we should step back and assess how all the regulatory steps we have taken measure up against the goals we all share. Since Dodd-Frank was signed into law in 2010, thousands of rules and reporting requirements written by 10+ different regulatory bodies in the United States alone have been added. And it would probably be an understatement to say that some are duplicative, inconsistent, procyclical, contradictory, extremely costly, and unnecessarily painful for both banks and regulators. Many of the rules have unintended consequences that are not desirable and have negative impacts, such as increasing the cost of credit for consumers (hurting lower-income Americans the most).

The whole process, including the Basel III endgame, could be much more productive, streamlined, economical, efficient and safe.

Both regulators and banks should want the same thing — a healthy banking system, serving its clients and striving for continuous improvement. We all should also want the enormous benefits that would come from good collaboration between regulators and bank management teams and boards.

Over time, these relationships have deteriorated, and, again, are increasingly less constructive. There is little real collaboration between practitioners — the banks — and regulators, who generally have not been practitioners in business. While we acknowledge the dedication of regulators who work with banks on a daily basis, management teams across the industry are putting in a disproportionate amount of time addressing requests for extra details, documentation and processes that extend far beyond the actual rules — and distract both regulators and management from more critical work. We should be more focused on the truly important risks for the safety of the system. And unfortunately, without collaboration and sufficient analysis, it is hard to be confident that regulation will accomplish desired outcomes without undesirable consequences. Instead of constantly improving the system, we may be making it worse. A few additional points:

• The Basel III endgame disadvantages American banks. The Basel III endgame has been 10 years in the making, and it still has not been completed. In my view, many of the rules are flawed and poorly calibrated. If the Basel III endgame were implemented in its current form, it would hamper American banks: As proposed, it would increase our firm’s required capital by 25%, making our requirement 30% higher than it would be under the equivalent European Union proposal. That means for every loan and asset financed in the United States by a major American bank, that bank would have to hold 30% more capital than any international competitor. The proposed regulations would also damage market making (see the following section). There are many other flaws but suffice it to say that much of the work being done today to analyze the effects should have been done before the proposed rulemaking. One of the single most important lessons from the great financial crisis is that there is enormous value to having a bank that is well-managed and has diverse revenue sources. Yet regulation since then both punishes consolidation and diversification — and punishes performance — through many features of the GSIB surcharge.
• Built over many years, the framework is now full of duplication. The following is only a partial list: American gold-plating and conceptual inconsistencies among Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review (CCAR), recovery and resolution plans, liquidity requirements, global systemically important bank (GSIB) requirements, and safety and soundness principles. The many overlapping rules contribute to the bureaucracy that generates an extraordinary amount of make-work (an 80,000-page CCAR and shockingly another, coincidentally, 80,000-page recovery and resolution plan).
• The new rules do virtually nothing to fix what caused the failure of SVB and First Republic. For example, they don’t improve certain liquidity requirements, limit HTM accounting or reduce allowable interest rate exposure.
• The current regulatory approach to liquidity might simply run counter to the stated intent. Regulations should recognize the value and importance of lending and borrowing against good collateral and using central bank resources, such as the discount window. Adhering to current liquidity requirements permanently ties up good liquidity in a way that makes the system more fragile and more risky.
• It is not clear what the full intent of the Basel III endgame was – it will have unintended consequences. Without real analysis of expected outcomes, additional regulation will likely reduce the number of banks offering certain services and increase costs for all market participants and activity, including loans, market making and hedging (by farmers, airlines and countries, among others). And new rules might even increase consolidation as companies race to achieve economies of scale in certain products and services.

Unfortunately, some recent regulations are ending up in court. You can imagine that no one wants to sue their regulators. Banks would not sue if they did not think they were right — or if they thought they had any other recourse — which they effectively do not. This is definitely not what anyone should want. A more constructive relationship with regulators would reduce confusion and uncertainty and would lead to better outcomes for banks, their shareholders, and their clients, customers and communities.

Collaboration between banks and regulators could improve the use of resources and create better outcomes.

True collaboration could dramatically improve the banking system. For example:

• Redirect enormous resources from things that don’t matter to things that do. As mentioned, it takes 80,000 pages to describe a CCAR test and 80,000 pages to detail recovery and resolution. The talent and resources at the banks and regulators could be better used elsewhere. Such overload is distracting and takes your eye off the ball on real, emerging risks, including China, trade, payment systems and cybersecurity, among others.
• Reduce bureaucratic processes that provoke a tendency to herd mentality. For example, CCAR is just a point-in-time stress test, and it can lull you into a false sense of security — for reference, we do more than 100 stress tests each week. On interest rate exposure, focusing on the documentation of details may stop you from thinking about big interest rate exposure. Sometimes analyzing “what ifs” and fat tail risks is better than excessive and rigid models and documentations.
• Examine risks outside the regulatory system that are rarely analyzed and largely unaddressed. These risks include data and privacy, as well as consumer banking and payment systems, which are growing fast in the unregulated market. In addition, there are potential risks from private credit markets (which I talk about later in this section).
• Let’s imagine what’s possible with real collaboration. Working together, we can improve how the FDIC manages failing institutions, how to limit contagion and restore confidence to depositors, how liquidity requirements can create more flexible funding for banks under stress, how the banking and Federal Reserve’s payment system can become more interoperable, how clearinghouse risk can be reduced, how stress tests can protect the system from a wider variety of outcomes, how costs and therefore consumer costs can be reduced (not increased), how anti-money laundering requirements can be simplified and improved at the same time, and how financial products can be brought to the unbanked. We can fix the housing and mortgage markets. For example, mortgage regulations around origination, servicing and securitization could be simplified, without increasing risk, in a way that would reduce the average mortgage by 70 or 80 basis points. The Urban Institute estimates that a reduction like this would increase mortgage originations by 1 million per year and help lower-income households, in particular, buy their first home, thereby starting them on the best way to build household net worth. There are many more things that can be improved — and we really should start working on them.

We need a detailed review and probably a complete revamp.

I know this might be wishful thinking, but now would be a good time to step back and have a thorough and candid review of the thousands of new rules passed since Dodd-Frank. After this review, we should ask what is it that we really want: Do we want to try to eliminate the possibility of bank runs? Do we want to change and create liquidity rules that would essentially back most uninsured deposits? Do we want the mortgage business and leveraged lending business to be inside or outside the banking system? Do we want products that are inside and outside the banking system to be regulated the same way? Do we want to reasonably give smaller banks a leg up in purchasing a failing bank? And while Dodd-Frank did some good things, shouldn’t we take a look at the huge overlapping jurisdictions of various regulators? This overlap creates difficulties, not only for banks, but for the regulators, too. Any and all of this is achievable, and, I believe, could be accomplished with simpler rules and guidelines and without stifling our critical banking system.

PROTECTING THE ESSENTIAL ROLE OF MARKET MAKING (TRADING)

Before we discuss market making and financial markets, readers should understand that market making occurs in almost all businesses. There are healthy markets in farm animals, foreign products, commodities, energy, logistics, healthcare and so on. Healthy markets increase customer choice and reduce cost. They almost always involve holding inventory and taking some risk, which is simply a part of the process. America’s financial markets are the biggest in the world — U.S. public debt and equity markets total $137 trillion, constituting the biggest “market” in the world, and are larger than America’s gross domestic product (GDP) of $27 trillion.

Market participants are not “Wall Street.” They are large and small, mainly sophisticated, global investors (pension plans, mutual funds, governments and individuals) representing retirees, veterans, individuals, unions, federal workers and others. They all benefit from our efficient, low-cost and transparent markets.

Some regulators seem to think that market making is a speculative, hedge fund-like activity — and this thinking is what might be leading them to constantly increase capital requirements. The proposed capital rules could fundamentally alter market-making activities that are critical to a thriving economy, particularly in difficult markets when market making is even more important . The new rules would raise capital requirements by 50% for major banks — which could undermine market stability, make banking services costlier and less accessible, and push even more activity to a less regulated banking system.

Our financial system and markets are the best in the world and benefit ALL participants; exceptionally good market making in the secondary market makes our primary markets the best in the world.

We should recognize that the United States has the biggest, deepest and most liquid capital markets in the world. For these markets to function, it is critical for transparency and liquidity to be in the secondary market . Market making provides this, promoting the flow of capital to real economy investments and supporting all sectors of the economy, including companies, state and local governments, universities, hospitals, pension plans and overall job creation. Without market making in the secondary market, it would be extremely difficult for companies to raise capital through the primary market — equity and debt offerings — which have totaled approximately $3.6 trillion on average over the past few years. The incredible strength of these markets enables companies of all sizes to grow and expand especially during times of volatility and stress. It also enables consumers to access cheaper credit and governments (local, state and federal) to reduce their borrowing costs.

JPMorgan Chase spends $700 million per year in extensive research coverage of nearly 5,200 companies across 83 countries. This massive effort continuously educates investors and decision makers around the world and often leads to improved governance and management. It also critically complements the firm’s market-making activities and further promotes transparency, enabling investors to make thoughtful choices around investing in capital markets.

I would also like our shareholders to know that our market making is backed by approximately $7 billion in support expenses, including over $2 billion in technology spend alone each year. This investment allows us to maintain global trading systems and constantly improve upon risk management and efficiency.

JPMorgan Chase deploys approximately $70 billion in capital to maintain our Markets franchise. This capital supports $500 billion in securities inventory (largely hedged) — and this inventory allows us to buy and sell $2 trillion (notional) in securities daily for our clients.

Market making entails risk but is not particularly speculative.

The main objective of market makers is to continuously quote prices and diligently manage an inventory to transact at those prices, which includes assuming certain risks to support heavy volumes and orderly trading. Market makers have a moral obligation to try to make markets in good times and in bad. Part of our brand promise is to stand ready as the willing buyer and seller. In this, we have never failed. In addition, in most cases regarding government debt, where we serve as a government securities dealer, we are legally obligated to make markets. This constant visibility into prices provided by market makers fosters investor confidence, keeps fees low and promotes economic growth by attracting more investors.

Many large market participants — for example, hedge funds and high-frequency traders, among others — have no obligation to make markets. In fact, many of these market participants often “step out” of the markets and dramatically reduce liquidity specifically when market conditions are difficult.

Market making is not particularly speculative since market makers generally hedge their positions, as you will see from some real life examples of the economics and risks. We earn revenue of approximately $100 million on a typical day. In the average year, the total is nearly $30 billion. On our $2 trillion in notional daily trading, this amounts to only one hundredth of a cent charged to the investor for these services — an extraordinarily low cost compared with any other market in the world.

Now let’s take a look at the actual risk and results versus the hypothetical risk and results. The hypothetical global market shock of the CCAR stress test has us losing $18 billion in a single day and never recovering any of it. Let’s compare that to actual losses under real, actual market stress.

Now consider these historical data points: First, over the last 10 years, the firm’s market-making business has never had a quarterly loss and has lost money on only 30 trading days. These loss days represent only 1% of total trading days, and the average loss on those days was $90 million. Second, when markets completely collapsed during the COVID-19 pandemic (from March 2 through March 31, 2020, the stock market fell 16%, and bond spreads gapped out dramatically), J.P. Morgan’s market-making activities made money every day prior to the Federal Reserve’s major interventions, which stabilized the markets. During that entire month, we lost money on only two days but made $2.5 billion in Markets revenue for the month. And third, in the worst quarter ever in the markets following the 2008 failure of Lehman Brothers, we lost $1.7 billion, but we made $5.6 billion in Markets revenue for the full year. The firm as a whole did not lose money in any quarter that year. In 2009, there was a complete recovery in Markets, and we made $22 billion in Markets revenue.

You can see that our actual performance under extreme stress isn’t even close to the hypothetical losses of the stress test.

Another major fallacy is that derivatives are objects of financial destruction. In reality, derivatives are an essential part of managing financial risk and are used by investors, corporations, farmers, businesses, countries, governments and others to manage their risks. And more than 85% of derivatives are fairly basic forms of foreign exchange or interest rate swaps.

One last fallacy is that the repo markets are all about speculation. While it’s true that repo is used by certain investors to leverage up their positions, about 75% of repo is essential to normal money market functioning, i.e., is done by broker-dealers financing their actual inventory positions, money market funds investing their cash backed by highly rated collateral and clients hedging their positions.

Market makers add confidence, liquidity and transparency to U.S. capital markets — market making helps stabilize markets and can reduce volatility.

In addition, more liquidity, not less liquidity, will be needed to maintain market stability. Large banks keep an inventory of securities they can deploy in times of stress to help soothe markets; however, with the implementation of new regulations, banks now hold 70% as much inventory in securities as they did before the 2008 financial crisis, while the total size of the market has almost tripled. Higher capital requirements will accelerate this trend even further, impacting banks’ ability to deliver support to clients and markets in times when it is needed the most.

Washington’s Basel III endgame proposal damages market making, hurts Americans and drives activity to less transparent, less regulated markets.

If this proposal is enacted as drafted:

• Everyday consumer goods could be impacted. Households contending with inflation could also feel the effects of higher capital requirements on market-making activities when they shop. From beverage companies that need to manage aluminum costs to farms that need to protect against environmental risks, if the cost of hedging those risks increases, it could be reflected in what consumers pay for everything from a can of soda to meat products.
• Mortgages and small business loans will be more expensive. Consumers seeking a mortgage — including first-time homebuyers and historically underserved, low- to moderate-income borrowers with smaller down payments — will face higher interest rates or will have a tougher time accessing one. This will occur not only because the cost of originating and holding these loans is higher but also because the cost of securitizing them will rise for banks, nonbanks and government agencies. Not only that, but the proposal will likely lead to reductions in the size of unfunded credit card lines, which will put pressure on FICO scores and thereby make it more difficult for some people to access other forms of retail credit such as mortgages. Again, this will have the greatest impact on low- to moderate-income borrowers who rely most heavily on credit cards for day-to-day spending and to build their credit history. It could even be argued that existing regulations go too far and that there is an opportunity to help underserved communities by dialing down regulations that lead to higher borrowing costs. This should be studied and the pros and cons analyzed. The same can be said for small business loans, which will become more expensive and less accessible.
• Saving for retirement or college will be harder. The cost of products that families count on to save for retirement or college will go up as a result of this proposal. Asset managers, money market funds and pension funds all buy, sell and safekeep securities and other financial instruments for American investors. Under the proposed rules, the cost of banking products used on behalf of clients each day — including brokerage, advisory, clearing and custody services — will go up and feed through to customers. That will lead to lower returns on retirement accounts, college funds and other long-term savings.
• Government infrastructure projects and corporate development will become more expensive. Federal, state and local governments, as well as corporations and other institutions, rely on large banks for access to U.S. capital markets to fund development. If accessing capital markets becomes more expensive, it will have a ripple effect on the hiring of American workers, investment in research and development, and funding to build hospitals, roads and bridges, including the planned infrastructure projects from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

More market activity will move to unregulated institutions, out of sight from regulators and without the same level of consumer protections that Americans expect from their banks. Other market participants that don’t have holistic client relationships are less likely to provide liquidity to help stabilize markets.

In volatile times, banks have been able to intermediate to help their clients and to work with the regulators. With new regulations, they may be less able to do so. There have been several times in the past few years where banks had ample liquidity and capital but were unable to rapidly increase their intermediation in the markets due to very rigid liquidity and capital requirements. Finally, the proposed rules increase the chance that the Federal Reserve will have to step in again — and this is not something they should want to do on a regular basis but only in an extreme emergency.

Staying Competitive in the Shrinking Public Markets

In previous letters, I have described the diminishing role of public companies in the American financial system. From their peak in 1996 at 7,300, U.S. public companies now total 4,300 — the total should have grown dramatically, not shrunk. Meanwhile, the number of private U.S. companies backed by private equity firms — which does not include the rising number of companies owned by sovereign wealth funds and family offices — has grown from 1,900 to 11,200 over the last two decades. This trend is serious and may very well increase with more regulation and litigation coming. Along with a frank assessment of the regulation landscape, we really need to consider: Is this the outcome we want?

There are good reasons for private markets, and some good outcomes result from them. For example, companies can stay private longer if they wish and raise more and different types of capital without going to the public markets. However, taking a wider view, I fear we may be driving companies from the public markets. The reasons are complex and may include factors such as intensified reporting requirements (including investors’ growing needs for environmental, social and governance information), higher litigation expenses, costly regulations, cookie-cutter board governance, shareholder activism, less compensation flexibility, less capital flexibility, heightened public scrutiny and the relentless pressure of quarterly earnings.

Along with the universal proxy — which makes it easier to put poorly qualified directors on a board — the pressures to retreat from the public market are mounting. In addition, corporate governance principles are becoming more and more templated and formulaic, a negative trend. For example, proxy advisors may automatically judge directors unfavorably if they have a long tenure on the board, without a fair assessment of their actual contributions or experience. Another example is the constant battle by some proxy advisors who try to split the chairman and CEO role when there is no evidence this makes a company better off — in fact, today, lead directors generally hold most of the authorities previously assigned to the chairman. The governance of major corporations is evolving away from guidance by governance principles that focus on a company’s relationship to long-term economic value toward a bureaucratic compliance exercise. Good corporate governance is critical, and a little common sense would go a long way.

THE PRESSURE OF QUARTERLY EARNINGS COMPOUNDED BY BAD ACCOUNTING AND BAD DECISIONS

There is something very positive about detailed and disciplined quarterly financial and operating reporting. But company CEOs and boards of directors should resist the undue pressure of quarterly earnings, and it is clearly somewhat their fault when they don’t. However, it is naïve to think that the pressure doesn’t exist because companies that “disappoint” can face extensive criticism, particularly those with a new or young CEO. It’s possible for companies to take short-term actions to increase earnings, such as selling more product cheaply at the end of a quarter, cutting certain investments that may be terrific but can show accounting losses in the first year or two, or just deploying more aggressive accounting methods at times. Once shortcuts like this begin, people all over the company understand that it is okay to “stretch” to meet your numbers. This could put you on a treadmill to ruin. Obviously, a company should not resort to these tactics, but it does happen in the public markets — and it’s probably less likely in the private markets.

THE HIJACKING OF ANNUAL SHAREHOLDER MEETINGS

One of the reasons it is less desirable to be a public company is because of the spiraling frivolousness of the annual shareholder meeting, which has devolved into mostly a showcase of grandstanding and competing special interest groups. We should treat shareholders with tremendous respect — and we do. At JPMorgan Chase, we are constantly talking with our investors — our directors, our lead director and our corporate governance experts visit most of our major investors whether they be direct owners or asset managers who manage the money for others. Meeting with your shareholders and investors is critical, but the annual shareholder meeting itself has become ineffective. We should try to come up with a far more constructive alternative.

THE UNDUE INFLUENCE OF PROXY ADVISORS

There are essentially two main proxy advisors in the United States. One is called Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), and the second is called Glass Lewis. These proxy advisors started out providing reams of data from companies to help their institutional investor clients vote on proxy matters (information on executive compensation, stock returns, detail on directors, policies and so on). However, they soon also began to provide advice on how shareholders should vote on proxy matters. And, in fact, institutional investors generally execute their voting on an ISS or Glass Lewis platform, which often includes a clear statement of the advisory service’s position.

I should also point out, because it may be relevant, that ISS is owned by Deutsche Boerse, a German company, and Glass Lewis is owned by Peloton Capital, a Canadian private equity firm. I question whether American corporate governance should be determined by for-profit international institutions that may have their own strong feelings about what constitutes good corporate governance.

While asset managers and institutional investors have a fiduciary responsibility to make their own decisions, it is increasingly clear that proxy advisors have undue influence.

Asset managers (who manage money on behalf of others) and institutional investors (e.g., pension plans and endowments) may rely on a variety of information sources to support their valuation decision-making process. While data and recommendations may form pieces of the information mosaic, their votes should ultimately be based on an independent application of their own voting guidelines and policies. To the extent they use recommendations from proxy advisors in their decision-making processes, they should disclose that they do so and should be satisfied that the information upon which they are relying is accurate and relevant. However, many companies would argue that this information is frequently not balanced, not representative of the full view and not accurate. In addition, companies complain that they often cannot get the data corrected, and, therefore, a vote may go uncorrected.

Almost all asset managers receive proxy advisor data and recommendations; while some asset managers vote completely independently of this information, the majority do not. Most asset managers have formed corporate governance or stewardship committees that are responsible for their voting, and these committee positions are often held not by portfolio managers and research analysts (i.e., the people buying and analyzing the individual securities) but by stewardship experts. While it is good to have stewardship experts, the reality is that many of these committees default large portions of what they do to proxy advisors and, more troubling, make it harder for actual portfolio managers to override this decision making.

Some have argued that it’s too hard and too expensive to review the large number of proxies and proxy proposals — this is both lazy and wrong. If issues are important to a company, they should be important to the shareholder — for the most part, only a handful of proposals are important to companies.

We are making enhancements to J.P. Morgan Asset Management’s proxy voting processes to amplify the role of portfolio managers and to address the perception of asset managers’ reliance on third-party advisor voting recommendations.

Enhancements to the firm’s internal proxy voting process will include:

• More portfolio manager participation in proxy committee decision making. The firm has significantly expanded the representation of portfolio managers on its North American Proxy Committee in an effort to increase the diversity of viewpoints represented on the committee. As part of this change, and in recognition that portfolio managers, as fiduciaries, may differ in their views on how to vote on particular proposals depending on a mandate’s investment strategy and guidelines, we are broadening our capabilities to support voting results that may vary across our platform.
• Diminished role of proxy advisor recommendations. J.P. Morgan Asset Management makes its own independent proxy voting decisions (based on deep fundamental research) and stands behind the depth and rigor of its processes and historical information advantage. In most cases, the firm will only use proxy advisory firms for research, data and technical mechanics of vote transmission and not for outsourced recommendations. By the end of 2024, J.P. Morgan Asset Management generally will have eliminated third-party proxy advisor voting recommendations from its internally developed voting systems. Additionally, the firm will work with third-party proxy voting advisors to remove their voting recommendations from research reports they provide to J.P. Morgan Asset Management by the 2025 proxy season.
• Other enhancements. We are working to give a company and its management even greater access to the ultimate decision makers; to raise critical issues to a company as early as possible in a constructive and proactive way; and to be willing to tell companies how we have voted once our decision is made rather than waiting until votes are finally counted.

Taken together, these steps are designed to respond to a growing perception (and, I believe, reality) that the asset management industry generally places undue reliance on proxy advisors in how proxies are voted. We believe these actions will strengthen our relationships with our clients and with companies while helping to build trust between shareholders, investors and companies.

THE BENEFITS AND RISKS OF PRIVATE CREDIT

I have already mentioned some of the benefits of private credit, and I’ll now mention some more. Many people in the private credit arena are very smart and creative and want to help the companies they invest in navigate through market shoals. They can move quickly, discreetly and flexibly. Most generally understand that bad accounting drives bad decisions, and their goal is to make the right decisions for the future of the company.

On the other hand, not all players are that good. And problems in the private credit market caused by the bad players can leak onto the good ones, even though private credit money is locked up for years. If investors feel mistreated, they will cry foul, and the government will respond by putting a laser focus on the business. It’s a reasonable assumption that at some point regulations will focus on the private markets as they do on the public markets.

This scrutiny will include a look at how private credit values its assets, which isn’t as transparent as public market valuations. In addition, private market loans commonly lack liquidity in the secondary market and are not generally supported by in-depth market research.

New financial products that grow extremely rapidly often become an area of unexpected risk in the markets. Frequently, the weaknesses of new products, in this case private credit loans, may only be seen and exposed in bad markets, which private credit loans have not yet faced. When credit spreads gap out, when interest rates go up and when some leveraged companies suffer in the recession, we will find out how those loans survive stress testing. In addition, they can create a little bit of a “credit crunch” for borrowers since it might be hard for private creditors to roll over loans under those conditions. Under stress conditions, private creditors would have to charge exorbitant prices that companies simply cannot afford in order to book the new loan at par. Banks are in a slightly different position.

A BANK’S STRENGTH: PROVIDING FLEXIBLE CAPITAL

Banks generally try to be there for their borrowers in difficult times — striving to roll over loans, renegotiate terms and raise additional capital. Banks do this for multiple reasons: They normally feel an obligation to help their clients, they have long-term relationships and they can commonly earn other sources of revenue from client-driven transactions. Banks can also flex their capital and lending base as needed by their clients. This is because a bank can and should make decisions to help companies through good times and bad, seeking to retain them as long-term clients across many areas of the bank. They can and do take “losses” that help the client maintain the franchise. But an asset manager must act as a “fiduciary” of other people’s money and cannot lend based on a moral obligation or potential future relationship.

Recently, we have been witnessing a convergence between the public and private markets. But it’s too soon to say how this ultimately will play out, particularly if we go through a recessionary cycle.

Management Lessons: Thinking, Deciding and Taking Action – Deliberately and with Heart

I always enjoy sharing what I’ve learned from watching others, reading and experiencing through my own journey.

BENEFITING FROM THE OODA LOOP

The military, which often operates in extreme intensity of life and death and in the fog and uncertainty of war, uses the term “OODA loop” (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act — repeat), a strategic process of constant review, analysis, decision making and action. One cannot overemphasize the importance of observation and a full assessment — the failure to do so leads to some of the greatest mistakes, not only in war but also in business and government.

A full assessment is critical.

To properly manage any business situation, you need to perform a full and complete assessment of it. In business, you have to understand your competitors, their distribution, their economics, their innovations, and their strengths and weaknesses. You also need to understand customers and their changing preferences, along with your own costs, your people and their skills. Then there’s knowing how other factors fit in, like technology, risk, motivations … hope you get the point. For countries, you need a thorough grasp of their economies, strengths and weaknesses, population and education, access to raw materials, laws and regulations, history and culture. Research, data and analytics should be at a very detailed level and constantly reassessed. Only after you complete this diligent study can you start to make plans with a high degree of success.

Get on the road – it builds knowledge and culture.

I have frequently wondered about all the nonstop road trips, client meetings, briefings, greetings, bus trips, and visits to call centers, operating centers and branches, regulators and government officials, among others: Did they make a difference? The answer is absolutely yes because they enabled a process of constant learning, assessment and modification of best practices — gaining insights from employees to clients to competitors. Employees will tell you what you are doing well or poorly if you simply ask them, and they know you want to hear the real answer. Curiosity is a form of humility — acknowledging that you don’t know everything. Responding to curiosity allows other people to speak freely. Facts and details matter and inform a deeper and deeper analysis that allows you to continually revise and update your plans. This, of course, also means that you are constantly admitting prior mistakes.

You need to shed sacred cows, seek out blind spots and challenge the status quo.

Very often companies or individuals develop narratives based upon beliefs that are very hard to dislodge but are often wrong — and they can lead to terrible mistakes. A few examples will suffice. Stripe, Inc. built a payments business by working with developers — something we never would have imagined but might have figured out if we had tried to seek out what others were doing in this area. Branches were being closed, both at Bank One and Chase, because the assumption was that they would not be needed in the future. We underinvested for years in the wealth management business because we were always focused on the value of deposits versus investments. Question everything.

Use your brains to figure out the truth — not to justify what you already think.

It’s often hard to change your own attitudes and beliefs, especially those you may have held on to for some time. But you must be open to it. When you learn something that is different from what you thought, it may affect many conclusions you have, not just one. Try not to allow yourself to become rigid or “weaponized,” where other employees or interest groups jazz you up so much that you become a weapon on their behalf. This makes it much harder to see things clearly for yourself. When people disagree with you, seek out where they may be partially right. This opens the door for a deeper understanding and avoids binary thinking.

It's hard to see certain long-term trends, but you must try.

There is too much emphasis on short-term, monthly data and too little on long-term trends and on what might happen in the future that would influence long-term outcomes. For example, today there is tremendous interest in monthly inflation data, although it seems to me that every long-term trend I see increases inflation relative to the last 20 years. Huge fiscal spending, the trillions needed each year for the green economy, the remilitarization of the world and the restructuring of global trade — all are inflationary. I’m not sure models could pick this up. And you must use judgment if you want to evaluate impacts like these.

Also, a block of time as short as one year is an artificial framework for judging the impact of long-term trends that could easily play out over years. A helpful exercise is to think “future back,” in which you imagine different future outcomes, including the ones you want, and then work backward to events that are happening today (or that might happen or that you cause to happen), closely examining the connections between those events and your projected or desired outcomes. Those connections inform your risk and R&D planning. Similarly, when companies compare the attributes of their products and services with their competitors, they usually only consider where they are versus their competitors. But nothing is static — they should consider where their competitors will be in the future. Conditions are always changing, crises are always emerging. When analyzing the playing field, it is better to assume that your competitors are strong and are already in the process of improving and innovating. This minimizes the chance of arrogance leading to complacency.

DECISION MAKING AND ACTING (HAVE A PROCESS)

There is a time for an individual to decide and act.

Sometimes you should take the time to measure twice and cut once. And then sometimes making a quick decision is better than delaying. You should try to distinguish between the two. For example, with decisions that are hard to reverse, it’s usually better to go slow. With other decisions where you can test, learn, probe and change direction, it’s often better to go fast. It’s been my experience that it’s hard for some people to actually decide and act. This could be from analysis paralysis, lack of “perfect” information, fear of failure or the feeling that full consensus is needed before a decision can be reached. But whatever it is, it can slow down and possibly seriously damage a company.

To get people to think like decision makers and take a strong point of view, we like to ask, “What would you do if you were king or queen for a day?” It helps shift the direction to individual decision making. We also ask questions like, “What would you wish for if you knew X was going to happen?” (for example, higher interest rates). Decision making takes a mix of courage, grit and guts.

One exercise that I find useful (and sometimes painful) is to draw up a list of important decisions that need to be made — the ones I often avoid confronting. So I take time every Sunday to think about these tough issues and almost always make progress. Progress doesn’t always mean that you come to the final conclusion — sometimes it’s just a very rational next step that can put you on a path to the final decision.

Try to have a good decision-making process.

Try to give yourself the time to decide. Make sure you speak with the right people and make sure the right people are in the room. Information should be fully shared. People should be made very comfortable with open debate. Quite often, the “right” answer is simply waiting to be found — you don’t have to guess.

Crowdsourcing, compromise, consensus and committees have benefits and risks.

There are huge benefits to crowdsourcing intelligence. It is a form of full assessment, a strategy for getting the best ideas and challenging the status quo. We should do this for almost every major decision. It is perfectly fine on some occasions to compromise and gain consensus, particularly on decisions that are not critical and can easily be reversed. Often people spend too much time debating issues that are simply not that important; it’s better to decide and move on. Also, before you compromise, you should know exactly what you want to achieve and the consequences of any tradeoffs. However, sometimes compromise and consensus cannot work and only lead to a feel-good decision that is probably wrong — this could be the road to ruin.

The use of committees can be good when done properly. For example, if our risk committees could do a full assessment and crowdsource all potential risks, that would lead to better decision making. I will give one very personal and painful example, which is when we had a major trading scandal, called The London Whale. The scandal was not caused by the complexity of the trade but rather the failure to go to the proper Risk committee for a thorough review, which should have happened but didn’t. I have no doubt that had the trade been raised there, the flaws would have been exposed immediately, thereby dramatically reducing or eliminating the problem. On the other hand, the opposite can happen when a committee, with everyone staring at each other, devolves into herd-like behavior with people looking for confirmation and ending up with a compromise that is a poor choice.

Good leadership involves great observation and the ability to act, but there is more …

THE SECRET SAUCE OF LEADERSHIP (HAVE A HEART)

You need to earn trust and respect with your employees.

You can be great at assessment, you can be brilliant and you may often be willing to act. But all of that is not good enough for “complete” leadership. To become a true leader, you need to be trusted and you must earn your respect, every day. People have to know that you do not have ulterior motives and that you’re trying to do the right thing — not trying to burnish your personal reputation. Good people want to work for people they respect, and they will not respect people who take all the credit and share all the blame. People need to know that even when you make mistakes, you’re willing to admit them and take corrective action. And there is more …

The importance of vision, communication and inspiration.

The reason I’ve always hesitated to talk about “vision” is because often it is the basic BS of corporate speak — that somehow if you impart your vision to people, they will take the mountain. What it really is all about is this: After you’ve done your full assessment and decision making, you can then continuously educate, explain, train, simplify, propel and fight. But this only works if people know you are in the trenches with them, if they understand the mission and if they are there side by side with your effort.

We know that bureaucracy can lead to politics, corporate stasis and terrible decisions. So you can communicate your vision about how to fight bureaucracy by telling stories about the silly things we do — but with a smile — and then by showing people that you will actually fix the problems.

Finally, your vision needs to be clear, coherent and consistent. Within an organization, people very quickly pick up the pattern of management saying one thing but doing another. Because if words and actions are inconsistent (for example, and I could give many, when we say we want employees to be treated with respect, but we allow a jerk to be their boss), confidence in leadership will be eroded.

Heart cannot be overstated.

Heart matters. And it makes a difference when people know and see that you actually care. One example: Many years ago when I was new to JPMorgan Chase, I learned that the company’s security guards had been outsourced — to save money. Since after outsourcing, when the same guards continued coming to work every day at the same salary, I wondered, “How could this be?” (FYI, this was brought to my attention by the head of the Service Employees International Union, who came to see me over the objection of my management team.) The reason we were saving money is because the healthcare benefits were cut in half for the guards and their family members (currently worth approximately $15,000 a year), and the savings were split with us. This was a heartless thing to do — and the second I found out, I reversed the decision. JPMorgan Chase’s success will not be built off the backs of our guards — it will be the result of fair treatment of all of our employees — and we’re thankful that many of those guards are still with our company today.

You know heart and soul when you see it in effect on sports teams or with “the boys in the boat” — it’s a beautiful thing to watch. It’s not as obvious, but it happens in business, too.

It’s essential to build trust with your customers, constituencies and, yes, even competitors.

Of course, I’m not bringing this up as a matter of corporate governance or a corporation’s purpose: A business should, over the long run, try to maximize shareholder value. It is completely obvious that running a decent business —treating everyone ethically and earning trust and respect in all your communities — is not only fundamental to shareholder value but also to a healthy society.

A Pivotal Moment for America and the Free Western World: Strategy and Policy Matter

In past years, I have written extensively about public policy issues. It is important to engage in these conversations, particularly around domestic economic policy because policy matters . While JPMorgan Chase can execute specific plans to improve outcomes for customers and communities, there is no replacement for effective government policies that add to the general well-being of the country. A stronger and more prosperous country will make us a stronger company.

As CEO of this company, every year I visit numerous countries around the globe. I meet with foreign government leaders, presidents and prime ministers, business leaders, and civic and academic experts, which allows me to learn a significant amount about how public policy is executed around the world. It also reinforces some of the critical values and virtues that are essential to a healthy country.

Every time I see the American flag, it reminds me of the values and virtues of this country and its founding principles conceived in liberty and dedicated to the notion that all men and women are created equal. Talk with someone who has recently become a naturalized citizen or watch a ceremony where groups of people take the oath to America, and you will see extraordinary joy and newfound pride. They now live free, with individual rights protected by the Constitution and with their life and the well-being of their family and community protected by the U.S. military. As Americans, we have much to be grateful for and much to defend.

If you read the newspaper from virtually any day of any year since World War II, there is abundant coverage on wars — hot and cold — inflation, recession, polarized politics, terrorist attacks, migration and starvation. As appalling as these events have been, the world was generally on a path to becoming stronger and safer. When terrible events happen, we tend to overestimate the effect they will have on the global economy. Recent events, however, may very well be creating risks that could eclipse anything since World War II — we should not take them lightly.

February 24, 2022 is another day in history that will live in infamy. On that day, 190,000 Russian soldiers invaded a free and democratic European country — importantly, somewhat protected by the threat of nuclear blackmail. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent abhorrent attack on Israel and ongoing violence in the Middle East should have punctured many assumptions about the direction of future safety and security, bringing us to this pivotal time in history. America and the free Western world can no longer maintain a false sense of security based on the illusion that dictatorships and oppressive nations won’t use their economic and military powers to advance their aims — particularly against what they perceive as weak, incompetent and disorganized Western democracies. In a troubled world, we are reminded that national security is and always will be paramount, even if its importance seems to recede in tranquil times.

The fallout from these events should also lay to rest the idea that America can stand alone. Of course, U.S. leaders must always put America first, but global peace and order are vital to American interests. Only America has the full capability to lead and coalesce the Western world, though we must do so respectfully and in partnership with our allies. Without cohesiveness and unity with our allies, autocratic forces will divide and conquer the bickering democracies. America needs to lead with its strengths — not only its military but also its economic, diplomatic and moral forces. And now we must do so as America’s leadership is being challenged around the world. There is nothing more important.

Policy and strategy matter, and it’s important to be engaged.

In our increasingly complex world, there is a vital interrelationship between domestic and foreign economic policy, particularly around trade, investment, national security and other issues. And, of course, while American voters and leadership set U.S. foreign policy, being a constructive part of the global conversation has become more important than ever.

If you doubt how important public policy is for the health of a country, you need to look no further than the recent history of Greece, Ireland or Singapore. Each of these countries, starting from deeply challenging places, implemented effective government and policies that have done a great job of lifting up their people when many thought it wasn’t possible. Sweden is another great example of a country with good broad-based policies that have succeeded at precisely what we all may want — a dynamic, innovative, free-market economy (Sweden actually has fewer government-owned enterprises than America) and safety nets that work. Conversely, you need to look no further than North Korea or Venezuela to see the complete destruction and havoc that terrible public policies (often in the name of the people) can cultivate.

Strategy by its nature must be comprehensive. In the rest of this section, I try to answer the question: What must we do to ensure that the world stays safe, not only for America but for freedom and democracy? A comprehensive strategy entails four important pillars, and we must succeed at each:

• Maintain American leadership (including military).
• Achieve long-term economic success with our allies.
• Strengthen our nation domestically.
• Deepen focus and resolve on addressing our most pressing challenges.

COALESCING THE WESTERN WORLD — A UNIQUELY AMERICAN TASK

Only America has the full capabilities of military might, economic power and the principles that most people around the world yearn for — based on “liberty and justice for all” and the proposition that all people are created equal. America remains the bastion of freedom and the arsenal of democracy.

There is no alternative to American leadership.

In the free and democratic Western world, and, in fact, for many other countries, there is no real or good alternative to America. The only other potential superpower is China. Other nations know they can rely on the founding principles of America. If we reach out our hand, most nations will happily take that hand. America is still the most prosperous nation on the planet, which not only can guarantee our military strength but also positions us to help our allies develop and grow their nations (though we should minimize the “our way or the highway” type of behavior). This leadership is needed today to help Ukraine stay free in its battle with Russia.

Most of the world wants American leadership.

America continues to be the envy of much of the world, and as we’ve seen with the challenges at our borders, there is a reason people want to come here and not to autocratic nations. If you opened America’s borders to the rest of the world, I have little doubt that hundreds of millions of people would want to move here. By contrast, not many would want to emigrate to autocratic nations. Also, I have little doubt that if most investors across the globe could only invest in one country, they would choose the United States. Beyond our country’s borders, people and nations around the world understand the role that America has played in promoting world peace — known as Pax Americana. For the most part, Pax Americana has kept the world relatively peaceful since World War II and helped lead to enormous global economic prosperity, which has helped lift 1.3 billion people out of poverty.

Modern America does not engage in economic coercion or foreign wars to steal land or treasure. The fact that some of our foreign excursions might have been misguided does not negate this. We helped rebuild Europe and Japan after the devastation of World War II, and we, with our allies, have helped create global institutions to maintain peace. We are still trusted.

First and foremost, the Western world needs unquestioned military might — peace through strength.

“We know only too well that war comes not when the forces of freedom are strong, but when they are weak,” said Ronald Reagan in 1980.

So far, the Western world has done a good job in strengthening military alliances in response to the war in Ukraine. Ukraine is essentially the front line that needs immediate support. Providing that support is the best way to counter autocratic forces that would seek to weaken the Western world, particularly America. But the ongoing wars in Ukraine and the Middle East could become far worse and spread in unpredictable ways. Most important, the specter of nuclear weapons — probably still the greatest threat to mankind — hovers as the ultimate decider, which should strike deep fear in all our hearts. The best protection starts with an unyielding resolve to do whatever we need to do to maintain the strongest military on the planet — a commitment that is well within our economic capability.

American leadership requires not only the military but also the full “symphony of power.”

Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, in his book Exercise of Power, writes extensively in the first chapter about “the symphony of power.” He makes the critical point that America has often overused and misused military power and has massively underused other muscles — diplomacy, intelligence, communication (explaining to the world the benefits of democracy and free enterprise) and comprehensive economic policy.

America has the most extensive group of partners, friends and allies — both military and economic — that the world has probably ever seen. We should put this to better use.

The American public ought to hear more about why this is so important.

International isolationism has run through American foreign policy throughout our history, frequently with good reason. The chant, “Don’t get involved in foreign wars” was often right. That said, the American public should remember that even after the Revolutionary War, we did, in fact, have British and French armies on our soil. The sinking of American merchant and passenger ships during World War I and the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in World War II brought isolationism to a close for a time. America is never far from being dragged into terrible conflicts. Global wars come to our shores whether we like it or not — we need to stay engaged.

In perilous periods of history when our allies and other democracies were under serious assault, great American leaders have inspired the American people — through words and actions — to stand up to help and defend them. Staying on the sidelines during battles of autocracy and democracy, between dictatorship and freedom, is simply not an option for America today. Ukraine is the front line of democracy. If the war goes badly for Ukraine, you may see the splintering of Pax Americana, which would be a disaster for the whole free world . Ukraine’s struggle is our struggle, and ensuring their victory is ensuring America first . It is imperative that our national leaders explain to the American people what is at stake and make a powerful case – with energy, consistency and clarity – for our strong enduring commitment to Ukraine’s survival for as long as it takes (and it could take years).

One last point: Ukraine needs our help immediately, but it’s important to understand that much of the money that America is directing to Ukraine is for purchasing weapons and equipment, most of which will be built in America. Not only is our aid helping Ukraine, but it is going directly to American manufacturers, and it is helping the country rebuild our military industrial capacity for the next generation.

STRENGTHENING OUR POSITION WITH A COMPREHENSIVE, GLOBAL ECONOMIC SECURITY STRATEGY

Sustaining America’s economic strength is a bedrock for our long-term military strength. There are many things we need to do to strengthen the U.S. economy, and I talk about that later in this section. This discussion is about foreign economic policies – the economic battlefield.

The whole Western world is rethinking and reimagining its military strategies and alliances. We need to do the same for our economic strategies and alliances, but we should be guided by a comprehensive global strategy that deals with critical issues. Done properly, such a strategy would help strengthen, coalesce and possibly be the glue that holds together Western democratic alliances over decades.

Foreign economic policy involves trade and investment, export controls, secure and resilient supply chains, and the execution of sanctions and any related industrial policies. It must also include development finance — think of the “Belt and Road” efforts in China — which are critical to most developing nations. This framework should tell us not only how to deal with our allies but also how to work with nonaligned nations around the world. These strategies should not be aimed against any one country (such as China) but rather be focused on keeping the world safe for democracy and free enterprise.

Economic national security is paramount — both for the United States and for our allies.

It is a valid point that the Western world — both government and business — essentially underestimated the growing strength and potential threat of China. It’s also true that China has been comprehensively and strategically focused on these economic issues, all while we slept. But let’s not cry over spilled milk — let’s just fix it.

We missed the potential threat from three vantage points. The first is companies’ overreliance on China as the sole link in their supply chain, which can create vulnerabilities and reduces resiliency. But to the extent this involves everyday items, like clothes, sneakers, vaccine compounds and consumer goods, this dependency is not as critical or complex and will eventually be sorted out.

The second is the most critical. The United States cannot rely on any potential adversaries for materials essential to our national security — think rare earths, 5G and semiconductors, penicillin and materials critical to essential pharmaceuticals, among others. We also cannot be sharing vital technologies that can enhance an adversary’s military capabilities. The United States should properly and narrowly define these issues and then act unilaterally, if necessary, to fix them.

The third is also complex, which is countering unfair competition or “mercantilist” behavior in critical industries; think electric vehicles, renewable energy and AI, among others. Examples of this would be where a state, any state, uses government powers, capital, subsidies or other means to dominate critical industries and deeply damage the economic position of other nations. Weakening a country economically can render it a virtual “vassal state,” reliant on potential adversaries for essential goods and services, which also weakens it militarily. We cannot cede our important resources and capabilities to potential adversaries.

All these issues can be resolved, though they will take time and need devoted effort.

Every nation will have different national security issues. For example, Europe in general and countries like India, Japan and Korea need reliable, affordable and secure energy; many nations would put food security as their top concern. This means that we must work with our allies to accomplish our own goals and to help them accomplish theirs. We have extraordinary common interests in our joint security: We must hang together — because if we don’t, we will assuredly hang separately.

We already engage in trade — improving it is good economics and great geopolitics.

We must have a better understanding of trade. As a nation, we refuse to get into genuine trade discussions, but this ignores the complete and obvious truth — we already have trade relationships with all these countries. Approximately 92% of the world’s consumers live outside the United States. Increased trade allows our workers and farmers to access those markets. We should negotiate trade agreements that can achieve more, economically, for ourselves and our allies, as well as meet all of our national security needs. While it is appropriate to use trade to continue to nudge allies in the right direction around human rights and climate, this objective should be subordinated to our national interests of long-term security.

Negotiating must be done in concert with our allied nations so as not to cause a fissure in economic relations. This is critical — strong economic bonds will help ensure strong military alliances. The Inflation Reduction Act has much good in it (more on this later), but it angered many of our allies. To them, the bill was by America and for America, and, subsequently, they felt a need to match it so their businesses would not be disadvantaged. The terms of the legislation could have been better negotiated with our allies in mind, strengthening our economic ties with the free world.

We should also immediately re-enter, if possible, the prior negotiated Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. Not only is it good for the economy, but it also could be a brilliant, strategic, economic security move — an economic alliance that binds us with 11 other important countries (including Australia, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Singapore and Vietnam). Geopolitically and strategically, this might be one of the most important moves to counter China. While this is a challenging step, our political leaders need to explain and lead — and not be afraid of dealing with the tough issues. We also need to acknowledge that there have been real negative job impacts as a result of trade, which are usually concentrated around certain areas and businesses. So any new trade policy should be combined with a greatly enhanced Trade Adjustment Assistance program, which provides retraining, income assistance and relocation for those workers directly impacted by trade.

Trade is realpolitik , and the recent cancellation of future liquified natural gas (LNG) projects is a good example of this fact. The projects were delayed mainly for political reasons — to pacify those who believe that gas is bad and that oil and gas projects should simply be stopped. This is not only wrong but also enormously naïve. One of the best ways to reduce CO2 for the next few decades is to use gas to replace coal. When oil and gas prices skyrocketed last winter, nations around the world — wealthy and very climate-conscious nations like France, Germany and the Netherlands, as well as lower-income nations like Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam that could not afford the higher cost — started to turn back to their coal plants. This highlights the importance of safe, secure and affordable energy. Second, the export of LNG is a great economic boon for the United States. But most important is the realpolitik goal: Our allied nations that need secure and affordable energy resources, including critical nations like Japan, Korea and most of our European allies, would like to be able to depend on the United States for energy. This now puts them in a difficult position — they may have to look elsewhere for such supplies, tuning to Iran, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates or maybe even Russia. We need to minimize anything that can tear at our economic bonds with our allies.

The strength of our domestic production of energy gives us a “power advantage” — cheaper and more reliable energy, which creates economic and geopolitical advantages.

Industrial policy is now necessary, but it should be carefully constructed and limited.

In some cases, industrial policy (using government resources to subsidize investments to help make businesses more competitive) may be the only solution for quickly building up the industries we need (rare earths and semiconductors, among others) to guarantee resilient national security. The IRA and CHIPS Act are good examples of this and government has to get it right.

Such policy can also be used to help combat unfair competitive policies of nations that are using state capitalism and state control to dominate critical industries. However, when crafting industrial policy, the function of government needs to be narrowly defined and kept simple; i.e., governmental jurisdiction should be limited to very specific products and probably to what we know works, such as tax credits and, to a lesser extent, loan guarantees. And industrial policy should include twin provisions: 1) strict limitations on political interference, like social policies, and 2) specific permitting requirements, which, if not drastically improved, will badly inhibit our ability to make investments and allow infrastructure to be built. Adding social policy, politics and matters other than simple tax credits dramatically reduces the economic efficiency of industrial policy and creates conditions for corporate America to feed at the trough of government largess. We should quickly address how we can improve on already executed legislation. We do not want to look back and have great regrets about how so much of this policy work failed.

There are those who argue that the U.S. government needs much more far-reaching industrial policy to be able to micromanage and accomplish its many ambitious objectives. To those I say, read the next section about how ineffective so many government policies have been.

We should be tough, but we should engage with China.

Over the last 20 years, China has been executing a more comprehensive economic strategy than we have. The country’s leaders have successfully grown their nation and, depending on how you measure it, have the first or second largest economy in the world. That said, many question the current economic focus of China’s leadership as they don’t have everything figured out. While China has become the largest trading partner to many countries around the world, its own GDP per person is $13,000. And the country continues to be beset by many economic and domestic issues.

China has its own national security concerns. The country is located in a very politically complex part of the world, and many of China’s actions have caused its neighbors (e.g., Japan, Korea, Philippines, among others) to start to re-arm and, in fact, draw closer to the United States. It also surprises many Americans to hear that while our country is 100% energy sufficient, China needs to import 10 million barrels of oil a day. It is clear that China’s new leadership has set a different course, with a much more intense focus on national security, military capability and internal development. That is their right, and we simply need to adjust to it.

America still has an enormously strong hand — plenty of food, water and energy; peaceful neighbors; and what remains the most prosperous and dynamic economy the world has ever seen, with a per person GDP of over $80,000 a year. Most important, our nation is blessed with the benefit of true freedom and liberty. See the sidebar on the amazing power of freedom later in this section.

While we may always have a complex relationship with China (made all the more complicated and serious by ongoing wars), the country’s vast size and importance to so many other nations requires us to stay engaged — thoughtfully and without fear. At the same time, we need to build and execute our own long-term, comprehensive economic security strategy to keep our position safe and secure. I believe that respectful, strong and consistent engagement would be best for both our countries and the rest of the world.

We need to strengthen and rebuild the international order — we may need a new Bretton Woods.

The international rules-based order established by the Western world after World War II is clearly under attack by outside forces, somewhat weakened by its own failures and inability to keep up with the increasingly complex world. This international order relies on a web of military alliances, trade agreements (e.g., World Trade Organization), development finance (e.g., International Monetary Fund and the World Bank) and related global tax and investment policies and diplomacy organizations (e.g., United Nations), which have evolved into a confusing and overlapping regime of policies. You can now add to it the new issues of cyber warfare, digital trade and privacy, and global taxes, among others.

It might be a good idea to convene a group of like-minded leaders to build and improve upon what already exists. The time may be right for a reimagined Bretton Woods — and by this, I mean revitalizing our global architecture. Since too many parts of the world have been neglected, any new system has to take into account and properly address the needs of all nations, including areas of concentrated poverty.

While we hope the wars in Ukraine and in the Middle East will end eventually (and, we hope, successfully from the standpoint of our allies), these other critical economic battles could possibly continue throughout our lifetime. If the Western world is slowly split apart over the next few decades, it will likely be the result of our failure to effectively address crucial global economic challenges.

PROVIDING STRONG LEADERSHIP GLOBALLY AND EFFECTIVE POLICY MAKING DOMESTICALLY

When you travel around the United States and talk with people of all types and persuasions, there is a rather common refrain; namely, why are we helping foreign nations with the safety of their borders and economies when we are not doing a particularly good job of protecting our own? While there is no moral equivalency in these arguments, they are understandable. It is clear that many Americans feel we need to do a better job here at home before we can focus over there . We can understand why some people living in this country, who have been neglected for decades, ask how their government can find the money for Ukraine and other parts of the world but not for them. It is a reasonable question.

From my point of view, our highly charged, emotional and political domestic issues are centered around 1) immigration and lack of border security and 2) the fraying of the American dream, particularly for low-income and rural Americans who feel left behind amid the growing wealth and prosperity of others around them. Please read the sidebar below, which I believe explains the legitimate frustration of some of our citizens. And I agree with them.

In the sidebar, I also explain how two policies (a large expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit and focus on work skills and job outcomes at high schools, community colleges and colleges) would not only dramatically increase both the income and employment opportunities for many of those left behind but would also have the virtue of actually growing the workforce. The combined effect of all of this would be quite a boon to our GDP.

I believe that many affected Americans are not angry at hardworking, law-abiding immigrants and, in fact, acknowledge the critical role immigrants continue to play in building this wonderful country. Rather, they are angry that America has not implemented proper border control and immigration policies. It is astounding that many in Congress know what to do and want to do it but are simply unable to pass legislation because of partisan politics. Congress did come close on a few occasions — and I hope they keep trying.

Deliberate policies meant to drive healthy growth are needed.

For over two decades, since 2000, America has grown at an anemic rate of 2%. We should have strived for and achieved 3% growth. Had we done so, GDP per person today would be $16,000 higher, which would, in turn, have paid for better healthcare, childcare, education and other services. Importantly, the best way to handle our excess deficit and debt issues is to maximize economic growth.

Growth policies include (the list could be very long so I’ll just mention a few):

• Consistent tax policies, conducive to both employment and capital investment. Capital investment is the primary driver of innovation, productivity and, therefore, growth in America. Tax policies change too frequently, which causes uncertainty and complicates long-term capital investment decision making (I won’t bore you with the details here). A bipartisan committee of Congress is probably required to fix this — and the sooner the better.
• Well-conceived regulations (and related laws). This requires an ongoing concerted effort to streamline regulations to cost-effectively drive better outcomes for the United States. The last thing we need is a constant pile-on of politically driven, fragmented policies. Please read the sidebar, an editorial in The Wall Street Journal by George McGovern, one of the most liberal presidential nominees in our lifetime, in which he clearly lays out the complexity, risks and costs that businesses, large and small, face every day. While he acknowledges the worthiness of the goals of many regulations, he points out their negatives. He also calls out the “blame-shifting and scapegoating and the endless exposure to frivolous claims and high legal fees.” Not only is this state of affairs demoralizing, but it also reduces employment, capital investment and the formation of new businesses, as well as cause unnecessary bankruptcies. Estimates of the regulatory costs for America are approximately $19,000 per worker, dwarfing the regulatory burdens in other countries. We all want sensible regulations that make us a better and safer nation – but this number is astounding. We should be able to accomplish our goals while sharply reducing needless and wasteful expenses. And remember, it’s discouraging not only to companies but to all citizens who have to deal with it on a daily basis.

WALL STREET JOURNAL

June 1, 1992

(Copyright © I992, Dow Jones & Co., Inc.)

Manager's Journal: A Politician's Dream Is a Businessman's Nightmare

By George McGovern Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late.

— Justice Felix Frankfurter

It's been 11 years since I left the U.S. Senate, after serving 24 years in high public office. After leaving a career in politics, I devoted much of my time to public lectures that took me into every state in the union and much of Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.

In 1988, I invested most of the earnings from this lecture circuit acquiring the leasehold on Connecticut's Stratford Inn. Hotels, inns and restaurants have always held a special fascination for me. The Stratford Inn promised the realization of a longtime dream to own a combination hotel, restaurant and public conference facility — complete with an experienced manager and staff.

In retrospect, I wish I had known more about the hazards and difficulties of such a business, especially during a recession of the kind that hit New England just as I was acquiring the inn's 43-year leasehold. I also wish that during the years I was in public office, I had had this firsthand experience about the difficulties business people face every day. That knowledge would have made me a better U.S. senator and a more understanding presidential contender.

Today we are much closer to a general acknowledgment that government must encourage business to expand and grow. Bill Clinton, Paul Tsongas, Bob Kerrey and others have, I believe, changed the debate of our party. We intuitively know that to create job opportunities we need entrepreneurs who will risk their capital against an expected payoff. Too often, however, public policy does not consider whether we are choking off those opportunities.

My own business perspective has been limited to that small hotel and restaurant in Stratford, Conn., with an especially difficult lease and a severe recession. But my business associates and I also lived with federal, state and local rules that were all passed with the objective of helping employees, protecting the environment, raising tax dollars for schools, protecting our customers from fire hazards, etc. While I never have doubted the worthiness of any of these goals, the concept that most often eludes legislators is: "Can we make consumers pay the higher prices for the increased operating costs that accompany public regulation and government reporting requirements with reams of red tape." It is a simple concern that is nonetheless often ignored by legislators.

For example, the papers today are filled with stories about businesses dropping health coverage for employees. We provided a substantial package for our staff at the Stratford Inn. However, were we operating today, those costs would exceed $150,000 a year for health care on top of salaries and other benefits. There would have been no reasonable way for us to absorb or pass on these costs.

Some of the escalation in the cost of health care is attributed to patients suing doctors. While one cannot assess the merit of all these claims, I've also witnessed firsthand the explosion in blame-shifting and scapegoating for every negative experience in life.

Today, despite bankruptcy, we are still dealing with litigation from individuals who fell in or near our restaurant. Despite these injuries, not every misstep is the fault of someone else. Not every such incident should be viewed as a lawsuit instead of an unfortunate accident. And while the business owner may prevail in the end, the endless exposure to frivolous claims and high legal fees is frightening.

Our Connecticut hotel, along with many others, went bankrupt for a variety of reasons, the general economy in the Northeast being a significant cause. But that reason masks the variety of other challenges we faced that drive operating costs and financing charges beyond what a small business can handle.

It is clear that some businesses have products that can be priced at almost any level. The price of raw materials (e.g., steel and glass) and life-saving drugs and medical care are not easily substituted by consumers. It is only competition or antitrust that tempers price increases. Consumers may delay purchases, but they have little choice when faced with higher prices.

In services, however, consumers do have a choice when faced with higher prices. You may have to stay in a hotel while on vacation, but you can stay fewer days. You can eat in restaurants fewer times per month, or forgo a number of services from car washes to shoeshines. Every such decision eventually results in job losses for someone. And often these are the people without the skills to help themselves — the people I've spent a lifetime trying to help.

In short, "one-size-fits-all" rules for business ignore the reality of the marketplace. And setting thresholds for regulatory guidelines at artificial levels — e.g., 50 employees or more, $500,000 in sales — takes no account of other realities, such as profit margins, labor intensive vs. capital intensive businesses, and local market economics.

The problem we face as legislators is: Where do we set the bar so that it is not too high to clear? I don't have the answer. I do know that we need to start raising these questions more often.

Mr. McGovern. the 1972 Democratic presidential candidate, is president of the Middle-Eastern Policy Council in Washington.

(See related letters: "Letters to the Editor: A Politician's Dream Is a Businessman's Nightmare" •· WSJ July 2, 1922)

• Timely permits on projects large and small. There is virtually no industry — from agriculture and construction to transportation, technology, and oil and gas — or business, large or small, that isn’t disadvantaged by the tedious process and the length of time it takes to get approvals for permits to get things done. This includes federal, state and local requirements. These bottlenecks also make investment far more costly and slow. Timely permits would improve infrastructure and save lives, not endanger them.
• Proper federal government budgeting and fiscal management. The staggering inability of the government to draft and pass a proper budget causes deep and unnecessary damage to our growth. Some people estimate that the waste alone (due to improper payments, overlapping programs, and fragmented and duplicative contracts, among other things) could cost the nation hundreds of billions of dollars annually. This uncertainty filters through virtually every part of the American economy and should not be accepted.

We can all forgo a little self-interest to do what is right for our country.

Those of us who have benefited the most from this country bear even greater responsibility to do this. It’s perfectly understandable that institutions, including businesses, unions and industries, lobby in Washington, D.C., to protect themselves — in good ways and bad — but we should more regularly put national interests ahead of self-interests. It’s good to want to ensure well-paying jobs and healthy industries. But it is not good when it reduces competition, stops the deployment of enhanced technology, harms efficiency, creates fake jobs or builds bridges to nowhere or damages the general health of the economy. Doing the right thing, the right way – which is achievable – would be better for everyone. As former President John F. Kennedy said, “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.”

Celebrate American exceptionalism.

We can safely say that America is an exceptional nation built and grounded on principles — principles of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, free enterprise (capitalism), and the freedom and empowerment brought to us by our democracy through the power to elect our leaders and of our Constitution, which makes these individual freedoms sacrosanct. Much of the world yearns to be here because of those principles — the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We should extol those virtues while recognizing that America has never been a perfect nation, like all other nations. We can acknowledge our flaws and strive to constantly correct them, without denigrating our nation.

Let’s celebrate the shared sense of sacrifice that gives us all strength.

There were very few positives from the pandemic, but I’m mentioning one, which, unfortunately, didn’t last, but reflected the best of us. In New York City, at 7 p.m. every evening, people throughout the city would open their windows, shouting and screaming and banging pots and pans to show gratitude to the essential workers — sanitation workers, police, firefighters, emergency responders, nurses and doctors. Of course, these workers were always essential, but I was hoping that spirit and civility would become deeply embedded and have longer lasting effects in our society.

I can understand when an individual for conscientious reasons chooses not to do work that helps our military. But I cannot understand when an entire company takes that position. How can we have a sense of shared sacrifice, when America is home to 18 million veterans who were willing to risk their lives for America’s safety, and yet some companies are not even willing to use their fingertips to help?

For example, back in 1969 the cancellation of the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps programs by the country’s most prestigious universities and colleges likely fueled the great divide – between elites and others in our country – that persists today. Our strength as a nation is best served when the best students and the best soldiers are brought together and we would all benefit from more civility and better teaching around basic virtues like hard work, shared sacrifice, justice, rationality and more respect for the enduring values of American freedom and free enterprise.

Resist being “weaponized.”

We can start by trying to understand other people’s and other voters’ points of views, even around deeply emotional topics. We can stop insulting whole classes of voters. We can stop name calling. We can stop blame-shifting and scapegoating. We can stop being petty. Politicians can cease insulting, baiting and belittling each other, which diminishes them and the voter. It has also become too acceptable for some politicians to say one thing in private and deliver a completely different message in public. It would also be nice to see some cabinet members from the opposing party. We should also stop degrading and demonizing American business and American institutions, which are the best in the world, because it erodes confidence in our very country.

Social media could do more.

There is no question that social media has some real negative effects, from the manipulation of elections to the increasingly documented negative effects on the mental health of children. These are issues impacting our individual and collective spheres, and it’s time for social media companies to take more action to remedy these challenges — and swiftly. Rapid advances in technology will not only make these existing issues harder to address, but they will likely create new ones. The current state of the online information landscape has wide-ranging implications on trust in institutions, information integrity and more — and it bears on institutions like ours, where platform policy has increasingly widespread implications for concerns about fraud, security and other issue spaces.

A range of tools and approaches is required to address this complex and important situation — and there are several measures that platform companies can immediately enact, voluntarily, while strengthening and improving their business models. One common sense and modest step would be for social media companies to further empower platform users’ control over what they see and how it is presented, leveraging existing tools and features — like the alternative feed algorithm settings some offer today. I believe many users (not just parents) would appreciate a greater ability to more carefully curate their feeds; for example, prioritizing educational content for their children.

Platforms could also consider enhanced authentication measures; i.e., having users identify themselves to the platform or to a trusted third party. This would have the virtue of increasing individual accountability and reducing imposters, bots and possibly foreign political actors on platforms. It would have immediate benefits for users who prefer content from authenticated sources that take responsibility for their postings. There are clear competing values that need to be balanced in such an approach, including those related to our cherished right to free speech, individual privacy and inclusion (for example, roughly 850 million people globally don’t have a way to easily authenticate themselves today). There are also legitimate questions as to whether authentication would be used as a tool to chill or block speech or quash bona fide political dissenters, and real work needs to be done to identify policy and technical solutions that balance such risks and benefits.

I offer these approaches as a starting place, understanding that it's crucial to continue honest conversation across sectors about the immediate, incremental improvements we can make to our online public square, considering the high stakes involved in how information is created and shared.

Effective measures will require time, money, learning and improvement, all in service of significantly enhancing the well-being, quality, and civility of our experiences online and in the world around us.

Healthy collaboration with business is needed.

Companies big and small create jobs, pay for employee healthcare and benefits, and build bridges, roads and hospitals. The people who work for and run these companies care deeply about their country — they are patriots, and they want to see people and communities succeed and prosper.

Unfortunately, the message America hears is that the federal government does not value business — that business is the problem and not part of the solution. There are fewer individuals in government who have any significant experience in starting or running a company, which is apparent every day in the political rhetoric that demonizes businesses and free enterprise and that damages confidence in American’s institutions. The relationship between business and government, in fact, might improve if there were more people from the business sector working in government. Inexperience with business is also evident from the regular lack of transparency or curiosity from regulators as they develop economic policies with potentially seismic consequences for the economy.

When I travel around the country, I experience a very different perspective on the street and at the local level — I see that many governors, mayors and city council members understand they are not facing big challenges alone. They stand shoulder to shoulder with our company, even when some of their constituents disagree or are skeptical about big banks. These government officials know they need partners who have the same stake in helping successful communities thrive and who care about building a prosperous future as much as they do. For example, in fewer than 10 years, Detroit saw one of the greatest turnarounds because of a vibrant collaboration between government and business. And businesses know they cannot succeed if individuals, families, towns and cities are not flourishing. We obviously don’t agree on everything, but there is a shared belief that we must work together. We can and should be full partners in developing solutions to our big problems.

The federal government, regardless of which party is in charge, needs to earn back trust through competence and effective policymaking.

The world is becoming more complex, more technologically competent and faster. Unfortunately the government simply is not built to innovate, compete and move quickly, as in the competitive business world. This may be the reason why government is becoming less effective. We need to take action on this because the loss of trust in government is damaging to society. We should be brutally honest about the staggering number of policies, systems and operations that are underperforming: Too many ineffective public schools do not give students the skills they need to land a well-paying job; we have over 25 million uninsured Americans, soaring healthcare costs and too many bad outcomes; we are unable to plan, permit and build infrastructure efficiently; our litigation system is capricious and wasteful; progress on immigration policies and reform is frustrating; lack of efficient mortgage markets and an affordable housing policy keep housing out of reach for many Americans; problems plague the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Internal Revenue Service; public universities don’t take responsibility for their costs and are often funded by excessive student lending; underinvestment in the electric grid results in high costs and unreliable service; highly inefficient U.S. merchant shipping and ports; and we have unfunded pension plans and no action on deficit spending, Social Security and Medicare. I’ll stop here. This should be unacceptable to all of us.

We need to find a way to bring more varied expertise and accountability to government.

We should be more ambitious in striving for excellence in government. I acknowledge that some of the best and the brightest are in government and the military today. Yet we should return to a government that seeks out more of the best and the brightest people from every background , including the private sector, to benefit from their knowledge and experience. Government also needs to leverage the expertise of business to address problems that it cannot solve on its own. And to be fair, business could use its influence to do less to further its own interest and more to enhance the nation as a whole.

We need good government. And there are some things only governments can do, such as oversee the military and justice systems. And while most innovation happens through the private sector, there are certain types of foundational innovations that can only be advanced by the government, such as basic research that simply cannot be funded by business. The Democrats want the government to do even more and the Republicans even less — I think we should spend more time trying to do even better . But no one, not even my most liberal Democratic friends, thinks that sending the government another trillion a year would be a wise use of money.

OUT OF THE LABYRINTH, WITH FOCUS AND RESOLVE

Even America, the most prosperous nation on the planet with its vast resources, needs to focus its resources on the complex and difficult tasks ahead.

I hope to never read a book about How the West Was Lost, summarized as follows: The failure to save Ukraine and find peace in the Middle East led to more bickering among the allies and weakened military alliances. This accelerated a division within the Western world, splitting countries into different economic spheres and with each nation trying to protect its economy, trade and energy sources. America’s economy weakened, eventually leading to the loss of its reserve currency status. Besotted by populism and partisanship and crippled by bureaucracy and lack of willpower, America failed to focus on what it needed to do to lead and save the Western world. The enemy was within — we just didn’t see it in time.

Paraphrasing what Winston Churchill was thought to have said: America, after it had exhausted all other possibilities, would do the right thing.

What I want and hope to see is a book about How the West Was Won. As the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East dragged on and as the fears of the Western world mounted, America rose to the challenge as it had in other turbulent times in history. America coalesced with its allies to form the alliances necessary to keep the world safe for freedom and democracy.

I remain with a deep and abiding faith in the strength of the enduring values of America.

WE SHOULD HAVE MORE FAITH IN THE AMAZING POWER OF OUR FREEDOMS

The heart and soul of the dynamism of America is human freedom — freedom of speech, freedom of religion, free enterprise (capitalism), and the freedom and empowerment brought to us by our democracy through the right to elect our leaders. Free people are at liberty to move around as they see fit, work as they see fit, dream as they see fit, and invest in themselves and in the pursuit of happiness as they see fit. This freedom that people enjoy, accompanied by the freedom of capital, is what drives the dynamism — economic and social — of this great country.

Our civil liberties depend upon the rule of law, property rights, including intellectual property, and restrictions on government encroachment upon these freedoms. Our Constitution and Bill of Rights secure our individual freedoms and reserve all rights to the individual other than those important but limited authorities given to the government.

The issue of individual rights is not all or none or freedom versus no freedom. There are, of course, terrible examples where individual rights were trampled upon, and the results were devastating — both for the individual and for the economy — in East Germany, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Venezuela, to name a few. And there are many countries that protect individual rights and are on a spectrum closer to American values. Think of Europe, for example. But even in some countries that have some of these rights, a lack of dynamism — often due to bureaucracy, weak institutions and government, and corruption — is palpable and has clearly led to less innovation, lower growth and, in general, a lower standard of living.

Freedom must necessarily be joined with the principle of striving toward equal opportunity. Equal opportunity is what allows individuals to rise to the best of their ability — it also means unequal outcomes. Equal opportunity is the foundation for fairness and meritocracy. The fight for equality, which is a good moral goal, should not damage the rights of the individual and their liberties.

Democracy and freedom are cojoined — together, they make freedom more durable. Democracy also has a self-correcting element — every four years you get to throw out leadership if you don’t like them (which you do not see in autocracies). But we all know that democracy can be sloppy: Maintaining an effective democracy is hard work. Democracy fosters open debate and compromise, which lead to better decisions over time (whether in government or in business). Intelligence is effectively “crowdsourced” with constant feedback. Good public policy comes from good debate and analytics, guided by reason coupled with a firm understanding of what you would like the outcomes to be and complemented with an honest assessment of what is really happening.

Even democracies can become stagnant, bureaucratic and self-perpetuating. Good government does many admirable things, but admitting to mistakes is often not one of them. It takes civically engaged citizens and a strong free press to bring sunlight to issues and keep a nation strong.

Autocratic societies by their nature subjugate the individual to the state. By definition they are not meritocracies — they are more about “who you know,” and they exist to perpetuate the existing ruling class. Their decisions are based on a completely different calculation, and their decision-making process does not encourage and, therefore, benefit from open debate. Democracy means that it is immoral to subjugate individual freedoms to state actors other than to protect the existence of the nation itself.

There are values that many of us hold dear, such as religion, family and country. But none may be more important than the freedoms that allow us to choose to live our life as we see fit. We should do more to applaud the virtue and amazing power of our freedoms.

HOW WE CAN HELP LIFT UP OUR LOW-INCOME CITIZENS AND MEND AMERICA’S TORN SOCIAL FABRIC

To fix problems, we must first acknowledge them. Despite decades of government programs and all the moralizing that surrounds them, we have not done a particularly good job lifting up our low-income fellow citizens. I may be wrong, but I do believe this is tearing at the social fabric of America and is among the root causes of the fraying of the American dream.

The gap between low-wage and well-paid workers has been growing dramatically. From 1979 to 2019, the wage growth of the top 10% was nearly 10 times that of the bottom 10% — which, basically, had not increased at all. The growth of low-income workers’ annualized real wages after the pandemic was, for the first time in decades, higher than the top 60%, but that’s not enough. The net worth for the bottom 25% of households is $20,800, and the net worth for the bottom 10% is essentially $0. This makes it increasingly difficult for low-wage workers to support their families. Of the 160 million Americans working today, approximately 40 million are paid less than $15 per hour.

Low-income individuals bear far greater burdens than the rest of us. Nearly 40% of Americans don’t have $400 in savings to deal with unexpected expenses, such as medical bills or car repairs, which leads to financial distress. More than 25 million Americans don’t have medical insurance at all; of these, one in five are in a family with income below the federal poverty level. People who live in low-income neighborhoods also tend to have worse health outcomes, including higher rates of mental health issues, depression and suicide, and a lower life expectancy — as many as 20 years. Finally, low-income Americans generally experience higher unemployment and more crime.

No one can claim that the promise of equal opportunity is being offered to all Americans through our education systems. Students in the lowest socioeconomic bracket are 50% less likely to attend college than those in the highest socioeconomic groups. Many inner city schools graduate under 50% of their students — and even those who graduate may not be well-prepared for the workforce. In addition, boys growing up in the bottom 10% of family income are 20 times more likely to be incarcerated. Those who do run afoul of our justice system generally do not get the second chance that many of them deserve. Their exclusion from the workforce is not only unfair to them but also results in an estimated $87 billion average annual cost to the economy.

Too many policies that are wrong — affecting housing and mortgage markets, healthcare, immigration, regulation, education and student lending, to name a few — are jeopardizing the opportunity for American citizens to succeed. The people who suffer the most, throughout all of this, are not high-income individuals. I strongly believe that these outcomes are destroying the concept of “fair” in America and are driving populism and diminishing, if not eliminating, trust — not only in government but in all our institutions. Simply put, the social needs of far too many of our citizens are not being met. We should never accept these outcomes — we must fix them.

There are two policy changes that I believe can have a dramatic effect on jobs, growth and equality — and they go a long way toward repairing the frayed American dream. Let’s start by treating all jobs with respect. Even starter jobs, which are the first rung on the ladder of opportunity, bring dignity and create better social outcomes in terms of health, higher household formation and lower crime. Of these two policy changes, one would better utilize existing resources, and the other would cost some money. But both would significantly change outcomes for low-income Americans.

The free one is so blindingly obvious that it’s almost embarrassing to propose. Our schools (high schools, community colleges and perhaps even four-year colleges) should take responsibility for outcomes — they should be judged on the quality and income level of the jobs that their graduates and even non-graduates attain. This means providing graduating students and other individuals with work skills (in fields such as advanced manufacturing, cyber, data science and technology, healthcare and so on) that will lead to better paying jobs. These schools should work with local businesses to replicate effective programs that are in place — because that is where the actual jobs are now. This would be good for growth and, as there are so many examples of successful programs, we already know what to do. With nearly 9 million job openings and just under 6 million unemployed workers in the United States, job skills training has never been needed more. We already spend a tremendous amount of money on education — just not the right way.

The second step is related to the first: Get more income to low-paid workers. While this one would cost money, it is to me a complete no-brainer since it is an expansion of an existing program, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), which many Democrats and Republicans already agree upon. Today, the EITC supplements low- to moderate-income working individuals and couples, particularly with children and people living in rural areas. For example, a single mother with two children earning $9 an hour (approximately $20,000 a year) could receive a tax credit of more than $6,000 at year-end. Workers without children receive a very small tax credit (96% of all EITC dollars were received by families with children). This should be dramatically expanded, including eliminating the child requirement from the calculation altogether. We should convert the EITC to make it more like a negative income payroll tax, paid monthly. Any tax credit income should not be offset by any other benefits these individuals already receive (we have to eliminate benefit “cliffs” that disincentivize work).

An increase in the EITC to a maximum of $10,000 would cost tens of billions a year, but I have little doubt that these policy changes would do more than anything else to lift up low-income families and their communities. Well-paying jobs have been shown to reduce crime, increase household formation, improve health and reduce addiction. Both of these policies would have the virtue of increasing the number of people in the workforce. I also have little doubt that this would add to GDP.

We should attack all our other problems as well, but these two policy changes alone would dramatically improve our low-income neighborhoods, broadly strengthen the economy and give more opportunity to deserving citizens. It would restore the American Dream for many.

It’s been 20 years since the Bank One-JPMorgan Chase merger — and it’s been an extraordinary journey. I can’t even begin to express my heartfelt appreciation and respect for the tremendous character and capabilities of the management team who got us through the good times and the bad times to where we stand today. And I recognize that we all stand on the shoulders of many others who came before us in building this exceptional company of ours.

I would also like to express my deep gratitude to the 300,000+ employees, and their families, of JPMorgan Chase. Through these annual letters, I hope shareholders and all readers have gained a deeper understanding of what it takes to be an “endgame winner” in a rapidly changing world. More important, I hope you are as proud of what we all have achieved — as a business, as a bank and as a community investor — as I am. Thank you for your partnership.

Finally, we sincerely hope to see the world on the path to peace and prosperity.

Jamie Dimon Chairman and Chief Executive Officer April 8, 2024

Bank of Client Franchises Built Over the Long Term Note: figures may not sum due to rounding

JPMorgan Chase Exhibits Strength in Both Efficiency and Returns When Compared with Large Peers and Best-in-Class Peers

Our Fortress Balance Sheet

Size of the Financial/Sector Industry

•  Facebook link (Opens Overlay)
•  Twitter link (Opens Overlay)
•  LinkedIn link (Opens Overlay)
•  Email link
• Annual Report 2023
• ©2024 JPMorgan Chase & Co.