Responsibilities for the Sustainability
Statements and the assurance-engagement
Contents Foreword Management report Corporate governance
We apply the 'Nadere voorschriften accountantskantoren ter
zake van assurance opdrachten' (RA/AA, the Dutch detailed
rules for auditing firms on assurance engagements) and
accordingly maintain a comprehensive system of quality control
including documented policies and procedures regarding
compliance with ethical requirements, professional standards
and other applicable legal and regulatory requirements.
We believe that the assurance information we have obtained is
sufficient and appropriate to provide a basis for our conclusion
and our opinion.
Reporting criteria
Rabobank developed its reporting criteria on the basis of the
sustainability reporting criteria as described in Appendix 1:
'About this report' and Appendix 2: 'Sustainably Successful
Together of the Annual Report 2016. The information in
the scope of this assurance engagement needs to be read
and understood in conjunction with these reporting criteria.
The Board of Management is responsible for selecting and
applying these reporting criteria. The absence of a significant
body of established practice on which to draw, to evaluate
and measure non-financial information allows for different,
but acceptable, measurement techniques and can affect
comparability between entities and over time.
Inherent limitations
The Sustainability Information includes prospective information
such as expectations on ambitions, strategy, plans, estimates
and risk assessments based on assumptions. Inherently, the
actual results are likely to differ from these expectations, due
to changes in assumptions. These differences may be material.
We do not provide any assurance on the assumptions and
achievability of prospective information in the Sustainability
Information.
Responsibilities of the executive board
The Board of Management of Rabobank is responsible for the
preparation of the Sustainability Statements in accordance with
the sustainability reporting criteria, as described in Appendix 1:
'About this report' and Appendix 2: 'Sustainably Successful
Together' on the pages 125 - 128 of the Annual Report 2016,
including the identification of stakeholders and the definition of
what is material to these stakeholders. The choices made by the
Board of Management regarding the scope of the Sustainability
Consolidated Financial Statements Company Financial Statements Pillar 3
Statements and the reporting policy are summarized in
Appendix 1: 'About this report' and Appendix 2: 'Sustainably
Successful Together' on the pages 125 - 128 of the Annual
Report 2016. The Board of Management is responsible
for determining that the applicable reporting criteria are
acceptable in the circumstances.
The Board of Management is also responsible for such internal
control as it determines is necessary to enable the preparation
of the Sustainability Statements that is free from material
misstatement, whether due to fraud or error.
Our responsibilities for the assurance engagement on
the Sustainability Statements
Our responsibility is to plan and perform the assurance
engagement to obtain sufficient and appropriate assurance
information to provide a basis for our conclusion and
our opinion.
A review engagement is aimed at obtaining limited assurance.
In obtaining a limited level of assurance, the performed
procedures are aimed at determining the plausibility of
information and are less extensive than those aimed at
obtaining reasonable assurance in an audit engagement.
The performed procedures in this context consisted mainly of
gathering information from the Bank's employees and applying
analytical procedures set out in relation to the information
included in the Sustainability Statements. The assurance
obtained in review engagements aimed at obtaining limited
assurance is therefore significantly lower than the assurance
obtained in audit engagements aimed at obtaining reasonable
assurance.
Our audit of the information presented in the fourteen
sustainability key performance indicators in the tables on the
pages 125 - 128 and Appendix 3 on the pages 129 - 134 in
the Annual Report 2016 has been performed with a high, but
not absolute, level of assurance, which means we may not have
detected all material errors or fraud.
Misstatements may arise due to fraud or error and are
considered to be material if, individually or in the aggregate,
they could reasonably be expected to influence the decisions
of users taken on the basis of the Sustainability Statements.
The materiality criteria used affects the nature, timing and
extent of our review and audit, as well as the evaluation of
the effect of identified misstatements on our conclusion and
our opinion.
120 Rabobank Annual Report 2016
