Global best practice in integrated annual reporting 2025
The world in which global companies operate has rarely been more uncertain and complex. This brings an even greater need for clarity in annual reporting.
Shareholders, customers and partners all need to understand how a business is navigating challenges and setting itself up for long-term success.
This is why our 2025 annual reporting benchmark focuses on clarity of message: how successfully companies manage to convey their strategy, how they integrate important themes such as sustainability and innovation, and what formats and techniques they use to increase report readership.
Hollis & Bean reviewed over 100 annual reports published in 2025 by large companies based in France, the UK and Switzerland. We identified five best practices companies can adopt to make the next round of annual reporting as impactful as possible.
1. Demonstrate clear thinking for a new world
Turbulence may be the new watchword, yet this year’s crop of reports by and large tend to stick to a tried-and-tested playbook. They start by acknowledging global uncertainty (usually in the CEO statement), before ultimately setting out their value stall in a way that inspires confidence.
It's clear why companies are doing this, but there can be a competitive advantage to nailing your colors to the mast. Multiple seismic shifts—from AI, to climate, to trade and geopolitics—are transforming the world that businesses operate in. Clearly articulating these, and candidly outlining their impact on your strategy, indicates strong leadership and potential long-term advantage.
Best practice: Vattenfall
Swedish energy provider Vattenfall’s annual report is a manifesto for the energy transition, backed up by extremely clear-sighted views on current geopolitical challenges and their impact on the company’s business model.
2. Make your CEO statement personal
A company’s CEO embodies the strategy and is generally viewed as its best advocate. Using the CEO statement to set out your strategy and progress against it is standard practice. But in an age of AI-generated content, there is unique value in an authentic CEO statement.
Readers want to feel that the text they are reading is “real”. A well-crafted CEO statement conveys personality and helps the reader grasp how the strategy is being delivered in practice. The best reports take this further by embracing video—either through a dedicated annual report video interview, or re-use of existing videos.
Best practice: Pearson
Pearson’s new CEO wrote a letter to introduce the report, in which he reflects on his first year leading the company. Within this personal context, he also gives an overview of the company’s progress and strategic direction.
Best practice: L'Oréal
In L’Oréal’s annual report, the CEO is interviewed on key takeaways from 2024, the innovations that stood out to him, his strategic priorities and more. The interview format means he can touch on a lot of different subjects in a short amount of time. In the online annual report, the text interview is accompanied by a video of the CEO answering the questions directly to camera.
Best practice: Aviva
Aviva chose to embed its full-year results announcement video, featuring its CEO, in its annual report site. This savvy re-use of existing materials elevates both the annual report site and extends the usefulness of the results video.
3. Integrate sustainability into your narrative
We’re seeing increased ambiguity around sustainability. It’s still present—but the language has been downgraded, the first mention appears a little later and instead of being integrated throughout, it’s included in a self-contained section.
There are two factors at play. The first is the US-led pushback against ESG, which ramped up heavily in the first part of 2025, leading some reporting companies to get cold feet. The second is CSRD and increasing noise around greenwashing: many companies in Europe were so focused on getting the regulatory reporting right that integrated storytelling took a back seat.
We believe there’s an opportunity to do things differently in the next reporting cycle. Our favored option is for a short “magazine style” document that sits alongside the regulatory reports, providing stakeholders with a view of how you integrate sustainability into your day-to-day business.
Best practice: Sika
We’ve been fans of Sika’s reporting suite for a couple of years now:
- a sleek digital landing page
- a short magazine
- an in-depth (regulatory) annual report.
The magazine seamlessly integrates the company’s sustainability story into its overall narrative, while the digital report features an interactive value creation diagram that clearly shows the role played by sustainability across the business.
4. Showcase products and innovation
An annual report typically communicates financial performance, business progress and governance. But it is also an opportunity to inform and excite audiences about the products or services a company provides. Think big pictures, exciting video shots and real stories that bring products to life.
This is often easier for consumer-facing companies, who can put their offerings front and center, while also providing the context and expertise that goes into making them. But B2B companies can typically attract strong followings from engineers, tech players and passionate amateurs, who are excited about the company’s potential to transform the world we live in.
Best practice: BMW
The BMW online report grabs attention from the get-go with an immersive ad experience.
By highlighting key case studies of different cars and their production histories, the report tells an engaging story about how the company has achieved its strong results. It also gives the reader a strong sense of the company’s leadership and unique offering, building confidence in the future success of the company.
Best practice: Apple
While not an annual report, Apple’s 2025 Environmental Progress Report models this practice exceptionally well.
After setting up the context of Apple’s efforts to improve product sustainability and presenting the company’s progress against six KPIs, the review goes in depth on eight product case studies. The stories show how the company’s sustainability efforts translate into better products for end users. Equally importantly, the products look clean, aesthetic and appealing –just as they do in the online store.
5. Create a report landing page on your website
The most effective annual reports include both a PDF and a digital component. As discussed in last year’s benchmark[H&B1] , annual reporting leaders are increasingly building reports directly on their corporate website.
In 2025, 43% of companies had a report landing page on their corporate website, as compared to 26% in 2024. Meanwhile, the percentage of companies creating a dedicated microsite remained constant at 11%.
The reasons aren’t hard to understand: not only is a report microsite more expensive, it is self-contained. Visitors to reports built on corporate websites, by contrast, often use the report as a springboard to visit other pages on the site.
Some of the best annual report pages in 2025 were single long-scroll pages featuring various design elements, including clickable tiles, embedded videos and interactive visuals and key figures. Looking ahead, we expect annual reports on the corporate site to have more pages, as report builders start to take into account generative AI search practices, and chatbots’ stated preferences for reputable digital annual report content such as CEO statements and strategy explanations.
43%
create a report landing page on their corporate website
11%
create a dedicated microsite
Best practice: Anglo-American
Anglo-American’s website incorporates a lot of complex data and many different text boxes in a clean and simple design by making the most of clickable tiles and horizontal scrolling menus. This example highlights how the online annual report can enhance and go beyond the PDF version thanks to interactive elements.
Build these best practices into your
2025 integrated annual report
Looking for more expert insights into how to create an annual report that will take your communications to the next level? We’d love to hear from you. This year, the Hollis & Bean team worked on eight integrated annual reports and sustainability reports for top-tier companies in France and Switzerland.
Get in touch today to discuss your reporting requirements for 2025-2026.
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