The predictive power of intangibles

This paper describes the need for intangible measurements for non‐financial reporting. Nowadays book value accounts for just around one quarter of the market value making the relevance of the balance sheet questionable. There is therefore a need for developing standardized methodologies for quantifying intangible assets and this is already underway. Two recently developed methodologies, The European Performance Satisfaction Index and The European Employee Index, is described in the paper and the benefit of applying these methodologies is exemplified through empirical data. These data stems from Amtsparekassen Fyn which is a medium sized Danish bank that has measured employee/customer satisfaction systematically since 1997 and the data used for this analysis is from the surveys conducted in 2000. The analysis shows that the measures for employee and customer satisfaction are good predictors of financial performance.