The recent proposals by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) to amend its accounting requirements for financial instruments in International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS) 9 include a welcome recognition of the need to reduce mismatches between how insurers manage their business and how they report their financial performance. Particularly significant is the proposed new ability to report on the short-term performance of debt security assets in the fair value through other comprehensive income (OCI) measurement category.
Nevertheless, the proposals do not go far enough. This is because insurers often have complex long-term asset/liability management strategies, and they may hold other assets such as derivatives, equities and commercial property to back their liabilities. In these cases, management/reporting mismatches would still occur. Insurance Europe strongly believes that appropriate and consistent consideration is needed on the inherent link between insurance liabilities and financial assets in order to reflect the business models and performance of insurers.
Insurance Europe is reviewing the IASB’s proposals for IFRS 9 in light of the IASB’s parallel development of proposals for insurance liabilities in its IFRS 4 Phase 2 project. A linked concern is that insurers should be able to implement the two standards at the same time in due course. Insurance Europe’s detailed views on the “IFRS 9 Exposure Draft on Classification and Measurement” will be communicated to the IASB before its 28 March deadline.
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