The Financial Transparency Ranking and Awards ranks quoted companies based on the level of financial disclosure in their published annual reports.

Currently, the FTRA has separate indices for banks and non banks with a separate index for ranking the insurance sector still being worked out. For banks, the FTRA will cover governance and risk management disclosure in their financial statements.

The governance section covers; Board Matters, Remuneration Matters,
Accountability and Audit matters.

The Risk Management function will cover the a bank's disclosure on Credit Risk,
Market Risk, Operational risks, Other risk (Strategy, IT, Legal and Reputational risks)

Over 100 indices testing with assigned points for each area of disclosure has been developed. The sum of points scored by each bank will be scaled down to a 100 percentile. The higher the score, the higher the level of disclosure and transparency in the published annual reports analyzed.

The percentiles scores will further be converted to a Financial Transparency Index (FTI) on a scale of 10. This index will be attached to company's listed profile name on the company's listing on the stock exchange. This will be the indication of the level of financial disclosure by the company, for example if XYZ Plc has a FTI score of 6.5 and ABC bank has FTI score of 2.5 then any external party looking at this information should easily be able to interpret this to mean that XYZ Bank PLC has a high level of disclosure and transparency in its financial statements than that of ABC Bank Plc.

Usefulness of the FTI
Several studies have shown that companies showing a higher level of financial disclosure and transparency in their annual reports are better managed and financially stronger than companies that have low levels of disclosure and financial transparency.

How FTI help investors;
For investors the FTI will serve as a good guide of where to put their money. Companies with higher FTI scores will naturally be a better investment than companies that have low FTI scores. The FTI greatly simplifies the investor's decision making process as he or she no longer needs to go through several pages of different annual reports to see companies that are well managed and that deserve his or her earned money. The FTI will greatly simplify the process of investment choices for investors

How it benefits regulators and other stakeholders;
For regulators, the FTI will be an invaluable tool. At a glance, regulators will be able to easily identify companies/banks that pose high risk to the system and increase their supervision and regulatory activities on these companies. Banks/companies with a low FTI score will naturally have a higher risk level than banks with a high FTI score.

Other Stakeholders
Depositors: The FTI will be a good indication of which bank to place their monies as higher FTI scores will indicate a strong bank

Tax Authorities: A higher FTI score will definitely mean that the bank is making correct tax returns while a lower FTI will mean that the bank's tax returns bear further scrutiny

Suppliers/Creditors: A high FTI score means a company that is in position to pay its suppliers without much difficulty while a low FTI score will mean that company will likely delay payments to its suppliers and may not be in position to even pay its debts.

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Ranking for quoted companies based on the level of financial disclosure and transparency in their published annual reports will improve the contents of annual reports in Nigeria.

Introducing ranking for quoted companies based on the level of financial disclosure and transparency in their published annual reports will improve the contents of annual reports in Nigeria.

Introducing ranking for quoted companies based on the level of financial disclosure.

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