10 November 2014

IASB/ Ian Mackintosh: 'The Maturing of IFRS'

The Vice-Chairman of the IASB described how widespread adoption of IFRS and a maturing of the Standards means that a decade of almost continuous change in financial reporting may be coming to an end.

IFRS means that the outlook for financial reporting is the same for most countries in the world. Accounting is on the cusp of becoming the world’s first global profession, largely thanks to IFRS. This is remarkable progress in little more than a decade. Mr Mackintosh spoke about the ‘maturing of IFRS’. For Europe and many other parts of the world, IFRS is a decade-old news story. The cost and burden of transition is behind. The convergence projects, and some really substantial improvements to IFRSs, are largely complete.

In the last agenda consultation, many pleaded for a period of calm, but then they had a few favourite projects they would like to see progressed, and, of course, the IASB had the convergence projects to complete.

The same is true of the IFRS Foundation as a whole. Four strategic and constitutional reviews have transformed the organisation from a young upstart into a mature international organisation, highly consultative with sophisticated processes and high levels of accountability. There is another of these reviews next year.

Research that the IASB recently conducted shows that 114 countries of 138 countries we surveyed require the use of IFRS for all or most publicly listed companies. In other words, four-fifths of the countries that the IASB researched are now mandating the use of IFRS. On top of that, IFRS is the predominant reporting language for most global industry sectors, while far more Global Fortune 500 companies use IFRS than any other reporting language—52 per cent use IFRS, while the next closest is US GAAP at 29 per cent.

The IASB cannot ignore the fact that the remaining one-fifth of countries includes some very large economies, such as China, India, Japan and the United States. However, even here the IASB continues to see good progress towards IFRS and global standards.

Full speech

© IASB - International Accounting Standards Board