The statement discusses:

• Impact on amounts recognized, measured and presented in the financial statements
• Importance of transparent and complete disclosures
• Non-GAAP Financial Measures
• Interim reports
• Implications for the annual audit
• Filing deadlines extended in many jurisdictions
• IOSCO interaction with other stakeholders

Review the statement on the IOSCO's website.

The statement notes that the responsibility for developing and maintaining high quality standards resides with the IASB and welcomes the IASB's recent educational material that addresses the application of accounting for expected credit losses in accordance with IFRS 9, Financial Instruments during the period of economic uncertainty arising from the COVID-19 outbreak. IOSCO also notes that the related financial instruments principles-based disclosure requirements in IFRSs (i.e. IFRS 7, IAS 1) should result in disclosure that considers the impact of the important emerging issues.

Review the statement on the IOSCO's website.

The objective of the document is to indicate the accounting implications of COVID-19-related government initiatives, including how IPSAS and other IPSASB guidance deal with transactions and events which arise because of the pandemic. The publication does not constitute an authoritative pronouncement of the IPSASB, nor does it intend to amend, or override the requirements of existing IPSAS or provide further implementation guidance.

Review the guide on the IPSASB's website.

The publication highlights the heightened risks of fraud arising from the disruptive and uncertain COVID-19 environment and the implications for professional accountants in business, including accountants in government, and professional accountants in public practice, including auditors.

Review the press release and publication on the IESBA's website.

Review these articles:

How to be an inclusive leader through a crisis?

Leaders are under extraordinary pressure right now. They are expected to make decisions quickly with incomplete and rapidly evolving information. And unfortunately, being in crisis mode can cause even the most intentional and well-meaning leaders to fall into patterns of bias and exclusion. Research shows that when we’re stressed, we often default to heuristics and gut instincts, rather than making deliberate and goal-oriented decisions. And yet, leaders must prioritize inclusion right now, more than ever.

Build your team’s resilience — From home

To make it through the current crisis and return to a new normal, you and your team will need to be resilient. The good news is that leaders can help create the conditions that make this possible. We’ve done multiple studies with U.S. Navy recruits that show how this can best be done—and, recently, in studying how leaders are responding to the crisis, we’ve come across valuable stories of how they can achieve this even when team members are working remotely.

What good leadership looks like during this pandemic?

The speed and scope of the coronavirus crisis poses extraordinary challenges for leaders in today’s vital institutions. It is easy to understand why so many have missed opportunities for decisive action and honest communication. But it is a mistake to think that failures of leadership are all we can expect in these grim times.

The agile C-Suite

Building an agile enterprise does not mean replacing traditional operations with agile teams everywhere. Agile is primarily for innovation, and the testing and learning it involves can compromise critical operating processes. Building an agile enterprise means finding the right balance between standardizing operations and pursuing (sometimes risky) innovations.

Begin with trust

Trust is also one of the most essential forms of capital a leader has. Building trust, however, often requires thinking about leadership from a new perspective. The traditional leadership narrative is all about you: your vision and strategy; your ability to make the tough calls and rally the troops; your talents, your charisma, your heroic moments of courage and instinct. But leadership really isn’t about you. It’s about empowering other people as a result of your presence, and about making sure that the impact of your leadership continues into your absence.

The case for a Chief of Staff (CoS)

Most new CEOs pay little attention to a key factor that will help determine their effectiveness: the administrative system that guides day-to-day operations in their offices. This system ensures that leaders make the most of their limited time, that information arrives at the right point in their decision-making process, and that follow-up happens without their having to check. Many new CEOs default to the system they’ve inherited, even if it is poorly suited to their style or to the operational changes they must make. Often there’s a better way to handle the information flow necessary for a CEO to succeed—and very often a chief of staff (CoS) can play an essential role.

Keep your people learning when you go virtual

The COVID-19 pandemic is bound to leave behind lasting changes in the way work and business take place. Learning will be the foundation of our survival, then, for both organizations and the individuals who make them up. As the world shifts to online work and businesses struggle to reinvent themselves, organizations need to learn what kinds of new products and services will appeal to their consumers and learn how to create them. Leaders must learn how to keep a distributed workforce focused, energized, and attuned to customers’ changing needs. Whether you are a CEO, senior manager, or junior professional, if you neglect learning, you stop adapting and forego leading.

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Coronavirus and Wayfair decision affecting state tax revenues

The Supreme Court decision in the Wayfair case combined with the pandemic are having a wide-ranging impact. It’s one thing to have economic nexus, but states also need to impose the obligation on marketplace facilitators. If you just have economic nexus, then all those retailers that sell on the marketplace have the obligation to collect, but the marketplace doesn’t. The states have figured out that if they make the marketplace collect, they can collect on the really small sellers that they couldn’t otherwise, since many of the smaller retailers don’t meet the threshold for economic nexus.

Global economic confidence plummets due to coronavirus, say ACCA and IMA

In normal circumstances, economic conditions change little in the space of just a few weeks. But these are not normal circumstances. So, although global confidence and orders both fell significantly in the Q1 survey, they do not convey the true scale of the global economic contraction that is now in progress. What is abundantly clear is that the global economy is heading into a recession, initially at least a severe one.

The coronavirus pandemic requires bold firm leadership

One of the pillar qualities of great leadership is adapting to the situation. Every workplace has different variables, from the personalities on a team to the health of a business. In accounting, one of the biggest environmental factors in the workplace comes in the form of seasonality. There are no getting around tax deadlines and the way they warp the accounting calendar. No matter how far you plan ahead, you will have to deal with the added stress and excess work that tax season entails. How you approach this situation as a leader goes a long way toward determining team success and mental well-being.

10 ways to immunize your firm during a crisis like the coronavirus

While the effects of the pandemic will be felt — and continue to evolve — for some time to come, it’s crucial for accounting leaders to think through their firms’ actions and to have a process in place to evaluate and redirect as necessary. Here are 10 suggestions to help firms think through near-term needs and create a plan to help shore up business continuity and mitigate some risks during this sensitive time.

3 steps to manage your company during economic uncertainty

Some companies are mobilizing to meet increased demand or pivoting their business models to better serve the changing needs of their customers. Others are facing much more difficult scenarios as their revenue streams evaporate. These challenges are exacerbated by the speed at which conditions are changing. Businesses must adapt rapidly, and the time for decisive action is now. Companies that operate well through this downturn may be able to leapfrog competitors.

Appropriately navigating risk is fundamental to effective directorship. Each board member should be prepared to ask tough questions of management about their response and planning process for business operations and stakeholder management. Boards will also need to consider longer-term implications of COVID-19 on the company’s overall operations and strategy.

Key questions directors should ask: 

• Where are our most significant operational disruptions and what is our plan to overcome them?
• How is our business strategy shifting in response to COVID-19?
• Have we discussed operational impacts on executive compensation?
• What are new risks do we need to report in our upcoming SEC filings?

Review the resource center on the NACD's website.

Articles from the NACD Blog

Private company governance survey reveals COVID-19 accelerated preexisting trends

The 2019–2020 NACD Private Company Governance Survey details responses from 283 private company directors—the same directors who today find themselves guiding companies that are among those hit the hardest by the COVID-19 crisis. The questionnaire was in the field from July to August of 2019. And while that might seem like a lifetime ago, the lessons drawn only take on greater significance as we project toward a new normal. What follows are some the key findings from this survey, and what they could mean for the recovery of private companies.

Redefining enterprise risk in a post-COVID-19 environment

The COVID-19 crisis has outpaced the resiliency mechanisms of most global businesses, bringing two related elements into stark relief: First, the degree of businesses’ hyper-connectivity exceeded the comprehension of most organizations. Second, many firms did not account for the risks inherent in the trade-off between efficiency and resiliency. Together, these two dynamics have revealed a degree of fragility within organizations—and indeed, the overall system—previously thought impossible. Whether or not we face a second wave of the pandemic, systemic threats—such as climate change and cyberattacks—demand new approaches to managing risk at the board level.

Navigating the pandemic: Risk oversight considerations from fortune 500 committee chairs

As companies are still confronting the immediate challenges resulting from the crisis precipitated by COVID-19, boards are beginning to turn their attention to the potential aftershocks of the pandemic to help shape their organizations’ post-crisis strategy amid great uncertainty and continued turbulence. Second- and third-degree risks, such as the credit risks of a customer’s customers or a supplier’s suppliers, are only beginning to emerge, and companies have little time to adapt to this new wave of challenges. At the same time, boards are considering the longer-term implications and opportunities that may result from the pandemic.

Think carefully before rewarding executives who cut their salaries

In past crises—the 2008 financial crisis, for example—we saw many instances of compensation committees “reimbursing” executives for their salary cuts with outsized equity grants. Some also made up for unearned annual bonus plans with equity grants in the name of retention and alignment with shareholders. Grants came at times of depressed stock prices and were usually for a larger number of shares than normal since grants were generally determined according to the then-current stock price of the underlying equity.

Cybersecurity defense and oversight during the COVID-19 crisis

Boards need to consider the ways in which their organizations’ cyber posture is changing as a result of the crisis. Board oversight is critical to ensuring that management is adapting to the evolving cyber-risk landscape as it works to maintain employee safety and continued business operations.

Articles from the HBR

How CEOs can lead selflessly through a crisis?

Crises cause us to view leaders as more charismatic and effective than we normally do. This is probably why U.S. presidents are almost universally re-elected in times of war. And research has shown that leaders who self-sacrifice tend to be the most effective.

Should a crisis change your CEO succession plan?

The exception would be if the CEO had shown any reluctance to hand over the mantle of leadership to a successor and might view the crisis as an opportunity to show how indispensable he is and stay in place. If the board does ask the CEO to stay longer than planned, limits on the extension should be negotiated; the terms might include a fixed time frame plus the existence of certain signs of stability, such as positive cash flow and sales forecasts.

These measures, along with the delays of previously planned regulatory changes, are designed to help reduce some of the operational stress on institutions. They also ensure that OSFI’s guidance is appropriate for these extraordinary circumstances while remaining risk-focused and forward-looking.

In addition to these regulatory adjustments, OSFI provided application guidance on three aspects of accounting for ECL in extraordinary circumstances: significant increase in credit risk, reasonable and supportable forward-looking information, and disclosure. This guidance is consistent with the requirements in IFRS 9 and should be considered along with the guidance provided by the IASB on the application of the standard in relation to COVID-19.

Review the press release and guidance on the OSFI's website.

The changes include a potential effective date delay of FASB's new lease accounting standard for certain entities, including private companies; a monumental increase in the number of lease modifications requested by lessees and granted by lessors; and the need for disclosures related to a company's lease accounting decisions in the new environment. Here's a closer look at lease accounting amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Review the article on the Journal of Accountancy's website.