Limited Assurance Report of the Independent Auditor regarding the Combined Separate Non-financial Report1)

To the Supervisory Board of Schaeffler AG, Herzogenaurach,

We have performed an independent limited assurance engagement on the combined non-financial report of Schaeffler AG, Herzogenaurach, (further “Schaeffler”) and the group as well as the by reference qualified part “1.1 Organizational structure and business activities” of the Combined Management Report (further: “Report”) according to §§ 315b and 315c in conjunction with 289b to 289e German Commercial Code (HGB) for the business year from January 1 to December 31, 2019.

Management’s Responsibility

The legal representatives of Schaeffler are responsible for the preparation of the Report in accordance with §§ 315b and 315c in conjunction with 289b to 289e HGB.

This responsibility of the legal representatives includes the selection and application of appropriate methods to prepare the Report and the use of assumptions and estimates for individual disclosures which are reasonable under the given circumstances. Furthermore, this responsibility includes designing, implementing and maintaining systems and processes relevant for the preparation of the Report in a way that is free of – intended or unintended – material misstatements.

Independence and quality assurance on the part of the auditing firm

We are independent from the entity in accordance with the requirements of independence and quality assurance set out in legal provisions and professional pronouncements and have fulfilled our additional professional obligations in accordance with these requirements.

Our audit firm applies the national statutory provisions and professional pronouncements for quality assurance, in particular the Professional Code for German Public Auditors and Chartered Accountants (in Germany) and the quality assurance standard of the German Institute of Public Auditors (Institut der Wirtschaftsprüfer, IDW) regarding quality assurance requirements in audit practice (IDW QS 1).

Practitioner’s Responsibility

Our responsibility is to express a conclusion on the Report based on our work performed within our limited assurance engagement.

We conducted our work in accordance with the International Standard on Assurance Engagements (ISAE) 3000 (Revised): “Assurance Engagements other than Audits or Reviews of Historical Financial Information” published by IAASB. This Standard requires that we plan and perform the assurance engagement to obtain limited assurance whether any matters have come to our attention that cause us to believe that the Report of the entity for the business year January 1 to December 31, 2019 has not been prepared, in all material respects, in accordance with §§ 315b and 315c in conjunction with 289b to 289e HGB. We do not, however, provide a separate conclusion for each disclosure. In a limited assurance engagement the evidence gathering procedures are more limited than in a reasonable assurance engagement and therefore significantly less assurance is obtained than in a reasonable assurance engagement. The choice of audit procedures is subject to the auditor’s own judgement.

Within the scope of our engagement, we performed amongst others the following assurance procedures:

  • Inquiries of personnel on group level, who are responsible for the materiality analysis, in order to gain an understanding of the processes for determining material sustainability topics and respective reporting boundaries of Schaeffler
  • A risk analysis, including a media search, to identify relevant information on Schaeffler sustainability performance in the reporting period
  • Reviewing the suitability of internally developed Reporting Criteria
  • Evaluation of the design and implementation of the systems and processes for determining, processing and monitoring disclosures relating to environmental, employee and social matters, respect for human rights, and combating corruption and bribery, including data consolidation
  • Inquiries of personnel on group level who are responsible for determining disclosures on concepts, due diligence processes, results and risks, for conducting internal controls and consolidation of the disclosures
  • Evaluation of selected internal and external documentation
  • Analytical evaluation of data and trends of quantitative information which are reported by all sites for consolidation on group level
  • Evaluation of local data collection, validation and reporting processes as well as the reliability of reported data based on a sample of the sites in Taicang and Suzhou (both China)
  • Assessment of the overall presentation of the disclosures.

Conclusion

Based on the procedures performed and the evidence obtained, nothing has come to our attention that causes us to believe that the Report of Schaeffler for the business year from January 1 to December 31, 2019 is not prepared, in all material respects, in accordance with §§ 315b and 315c in conjunction with 289b to 289e HGB.

Restriction of Use/Clause on General Engagement Terms

This report is issued for purposes of the Supervisory Board of Schaeffler AG, Herzogenaurach, only. We assume no responsibility with regard to any third parties.

Our assignment for the Supervisory Board of Schaeffler AG, Herzogenaurach, and professional liability is governed by the General Engagement Terms for Wirtschaftsprüfer and Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaften (Allgemeine Auftragsbedingungen für Wirtschaftsprüfer und Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaften) in the version dated January 1, 2017 (https://www.kpmg.de/bescheinigungen/lib/aab_english.pdf).

By reading and using the information contained in this report, each recipient confirms notice of provisions of the General Engagement Terms (including the limitation of our liability for negligence to EUR 4 million as stipulated in No. 9) and accepts the validity of the General Engagement Terms with respect to us.

Munich, Feburary 18, 2020

KPMG AG
Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft

Koeplin

Hell

Wirtschaftsprüfer

1) Our engagement applied to the German version of the Report 2019. This text is a translation of the Independent Assurance Report issued in the German, whereas the German text is authoritative.