Boilerplate
1. Documentation - contract - law.
Standard wording that can be incorporated into a draft contract or other document, designed to reduce the expense and delay of extensive negotiations and of errors.
2. Documentation - contract - law.
Entire standard-worded draft documents produced for similar reasons.
3. Information technology.
Abbreviation for boilerplate code.
A section of code that is repeated without modification - or with only minimal modifications - in different places.
4. Financial reporting - investor relations.
In the context of reporting and communication, boilerplate can have negative connotations.
For example, boilerplate disclosures are standard-worded ones that fail to provide insight into the situations they describe.
- Avoid boilerplate TCFD disclosures
- "The FRC has published its Annual Review of Corporate Reporting...
- ... the FRC draws attention to the importance of TCFD disclosures, mandatory for the first time for December year end reporters, urging that disclosure should be integrated into the annual report and avoid boilerplate."
- Deloitte Academy - November 2021.
- Boilerplate statements not backed up
- "Unfortunately, as last year, we continue to see the use of boilerplate or declaratory statements.
- These statements are seldom substantiated by actions or examples, and therefore do not offer insight into company governance...
- ... the vast majority of reporting on outcomes of community engagement remained generic and boilerplate."
- Review of Corporate Governance Reporting - Financial Reporting Council - November 2021, p3 & p30.
5. Reporting - standard forms.
A specification of a reporting format.
This type of boilerplate is designed to ensure that reporting is complete, easy to receive, and easy to incorporate into other systems, for example by always including - as a minimum - specified important items in the same order.
6. Origins - engineering.
In engineering, boilerplates are steel that has been rolled out into standardised plates.
Steel boilerplates can be used for a number of engineering purposes, including making boilers.
By analogy, the term boilerplate was extended to printed material, in the era when smaller local newspapers incorporated syndicated content supplied in the form of pre-typeset metal blocks of text.
See also
- Annual report
- Bespoke
- Clause
- Contract
- Deloitte
- Documentation
- Financial reporting
- Financial Reporting Council (FRC)
- Governance
- Information technology
- Investor relations
- Law
- Standard
- Syndicate
- Tailor
- Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD)
