Corporate financial voluntary reporting practices in Indian banking companies

Accounting is a process to identify measurer and communicate economic information to permit informed judgments and decisions by the user of the information. Its function is to provide quantitative information, primarily financial in name, about economic entities, that is intended to be useful in making economic decisions and related choice among alternative course of action. Financial disclosure may be defined as communication of published financial statement and related information from a business enterprise to all users. It is the reporting of accounting information of an entity to a user or group of users. The changes are driven by the additional disclosure requirements prescribed through amendments to the Companies Act, 1956; by considerably amending disclosure requirements under SEBI regulations; disclosures required under the reserve bank of India; and by additional disclosure requirements stipulated in revised and new accounting standards. For the purpose of study we have taken the Indian banks, In India the total number of banks are 49 in which 27 (19 Nationalized, 6 SBI group, 1 Others) are in public sector and 23 (15 Old, 8 New) are in private sector. In their effectiveness in terms of substance & quality reported in annual reports researchers have selected total 10 Indian banks out of 50 banks. 5 from public sector and 5 from private sector. These banks are selected on the basis of judgment sampling approach. These banks are having the highest market share and the good international rating given by the rating authorities (CARE, ICRA), and these Banks are listed in Bombay Stock Exchange and National Stock Exchange. The data was collected from the secondary source that is annual report of the Indian banks. In this study we selected the total 12 voluntary items which are generally included in voluntary reporting. In this study we find out the voluntary disclosure practices are adopted in both the public and private sector banks. This study provides a comparative study of public and private sector banks in India. This study will be helpful to the stakeholder and provide help to interested users and analyzers.