Saying it with confidence: disclosing value uncertainty

Every valuation is an estimate, and every estimate carries uncertainty. The instinct of many valuers and preparers has been to treat that fact as awkward — something to be minimised in the report and avoided in conversation. The IVSC’s Perspectives Paper Managing and Communicating Value Uncertainty, published on 19 May 2026 by its Valuation Risk Working Group, argues the opposite: value uncertainty is inherent in valuation, not a failure of it, and transparency about uncertainty strengthens confidence in the conclusion rather than undermining it.

Two things that look alike but are not

The paper’s central move is a distinction that valuers, preparers and reviewers all need to hold onto, because the right response to each is different.

A range of credible outcomes

Perhaps the paper’s most useful sentence for preparers is its acknowledgement that even a fully IVS-compliant valuation may yield a range of credible outcomes. A point estimate is usually still required, but the existence of a defensible range around it is not evidence that the work was deficient. In periods of heightened market volatility or rapid repricing of assets, and in less liquid or harder-to-observe markets, that range can widen quickly — and the pressure to report at speed compounds the challenge. An IVSC interview on the pace of private-market reporting found that fewer than one in six firms feel equipped to re-run valuations in real time during macro shocks, even as expectations of valuation frequency rise. Honest communication about uncertainty is most valuable precisely when conditions make estimates hardest.

Where the standards already point

Disclosure of uncertainty is a natural extension of where the IVS General Standards already lead: the sequence from scope of work through data, inputs and models culminates in IVS 106 Documentation and Reporting. The direction of travel in the current revision cycle reinforces this — the IVSC has described proposed revisions to IVS 106 that push explicit disclosure of assumptions and of specialists relied upon. A report that states its assumptions explicitly is already most of the way to communicating its uncertainty: the reader can see which judgements the conclusion rests on, and how sensitive it might be to them.

An open conversation

The Perspectives Paper is not a closed pronouncement. It poses five consultation questions, inviting the profession to shape how uncertainty should be managed and communicated in practice. That format suits the subject. How much disclosure is useful, in what form, and to which users are questions on which valuers, preparers, auditors and investors will have different and legitimate views. What the paper settles is the premise: uncertainty disclosed is not weakness confessed. A valuation that says, candidly, how confident its author is — and why — gives its users more to rely on, not less.