In the response to the consultation, Deloitte also notes that if reducing local GAAP differences were to be considered a priority in the EU and if feasibility studies show that obstacles can be overcome, it would favor initiatives that would gradually allow closer or fuller convergence with IFRS. This could take place through amendments to the Directives or the IAS Regulation allowing companies to voluntarily adopt IFRS in individual or consolidated financial statements, rather than leaving this to the discretion of Member States to decide whether or not this option is granted to the companies in their jurisdiction.

Please click to download the full comment letter here (cover letter with main messages first, followed by completed questionnaire).

The AcSB's new survey captures your feedback on the AcSB’s Draft Framework for Reporting Performance Measures and requests this information by September 17, 2018.

The AcSB’s target audience includes preparers, directors, users, practitioners, regulators, academics and standard setters.”

Here is a link to the survey on the AcSB's web­site.

The report provides an in-depth description of the current state of climate-related financial disclosure and effective disclosure practices among leading oil and gas companies.

It is available here on the WBCSD website.

This webcasts discusses the Board’s preferred approach and clas­si­fi­ca­tion of non-de­riv­a­tive financial in­stru­ments.

Future webcasts in the series will cover:

• Clas­si­fi­ca­tion of de­riv­a­tives on own equity.
• Clas­si­fi­ca­tion of compound in­stru­ments and re­demp­tion oblig­a­tion arrange­ments.
• Pre­sen­ta­tion of equity in­stru­ments.
• Pre­sen­ta­tion of financial li­a­bil­i­ties.

For more in­for­ma­tion, see the press release on the IASB’s website and the webcast on the IFRS Foun­da­tion’s YouTube channel.

The ASU makes im­prove­ments to the fol­low­ing aspects of the guid­ance in the ASU:

• Resid­ual value guar­an­tees.
• Rate im­plicit in the lease.
• Lessee’s re­assess­ment of lease clas­si­fi­ca­tion.
• Lessor’s re­assess­ment of lease term and pur­chase option.
• Vari­able lease pay­ments that depend on an index or a rate.
• In­vest­ment tax credits.
• Lease term and pur­chase option.
• Tran­si­tion guid­ance related to amounts pre­vi­ously rec­og­nized in busi­ness com­bi­na­tions.
• Certain tran­si­tion ad­just­ments.
• Tran­si­tion guid­ance for leases pre­vi­ously clas­si­fied as capital leases under ASC 840.
• Tran­si­tion guid­ance related to mod­i­fi­ca­tions to leases pre­vi­ously clas­si­fied as direct fi­nanc­ing or sales-type leases under ASC 840.
• Tran­si­tion guid­ance related to sale-and-lease­back trans­ac­tions.
• Im­pair­ment of net in­vest­ment in the lease.
• Un­guar­an­teed resid­ual assets.
• Effect of initial direct costs on rate im­plicit in the lease.
• Failed sale-and-lease­back trans­ac­tions.

For more in­for­ma­tion, see the ASU on the FASB’s Web site.

Key findings of the survey include:

• Just enough time to get ready
  Global insurers are cau­tiously confident that they will meet the im­ple­men­ta­tion date with 90 percent re­spond­ing that they believe they will be compliant by January 1, 2021. Of this total, 45 percent indicated strong con­fi­dence to finish on time, with health insurers being the more confident sub-group at 60 percent, and life insurers, with only 37 percent, being the more cautious sub-group. From a regional per­spec­tive, Europe is more confident than other regions.
• Upgrading tech­nol­ogy is necessary
  87 percent of insurers believe their systems tech­nol­ogy will require upgrades to capture the new data and perform the cal­cu­la­tions required for com­pli­ance. Capturing data inputs was also cited as the largest tech­nol­ogy challenge.
• Sig­nif­i­cant im­ple­men­ta­tion costs have been budgeted
  The majority of insurers have now set some ex­pec­ta­tions around budget, with results showing the expected spend to be sig­nif­i­cantly greater than ex­pec­ta­tions captured in 2013. 35 percent of insurers expect to spend more than EUR 50m to meet com­pli­ance, compared with only 7 percent five years ago.
• Insurers are seeing more benefits vs. cost
  93 percent of global insurers feel that the benefits of adopting IFRS 17 will outweigh the cost of com­pli­ance. This is compared to only 21 percent in 2013.
• Actuarial, accounting and col­lab­o­ra­tion skills will be in high demand
  Insurers cited col­lab­o­ra­tion skills as being equally as important as actuarial skills. Many of them said they would try to drive tighter in­te­gra­tion between finance, actuarial, and other de­part­ments. They also report having the greatest dif­fi­culty in finding actuarial and accounting expertise.

For more in­for­ma­tion, see the Global IFRS Insurance Survey 2018 and visit the survey page on Deloitte.​com.

Pre­vi­ously, Mr Liikanen has worked in various lead­er­ship positions which included serving as Governor of the Bank of Finland, Governor of the International Monetary Fund, and member of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank.

For more in­for­ma­tion, see the press release on the IASB’s website.

The 18 minute video Research and Standard setting—How to con­tribute to the IASB's work can be accessed here.

The publication is available here on the GRI website.  

One of the questions in the fitness check relates to whether it is still ap­pro­pri­ate that the IAS Reg­u­la­tion prevents the European Commission (EC) from modifying the content of IFRS as issued by the IASB. ESMA notes that the EC has only recently sought feedback on this question twice (2013 and 2015) and both times the great majority of stake­hold­ers cautioned against in­tro­duc­ing such a pos­si­bil­ity. The ESMA response adds:

In line with its prior positions, ESMA strongly disagrees with this rec­om­men­da­tion, most notably because any Eu­ro­pean-spe­cific ad­just­ments to IFRS would defy one of the key ob­jec­tives of the IAS Reg­u­la­tion, namely that financial reporting standards applied by listed issuers are accepted in­ter­na­tion­ally and are truly global standards. In addition, we believe that mod­i­fi­ca­tions to IFRS at the European level would hinder the capacity of European companies to compete for financial resources on equal terms in global capital markets. In our view, the different levels of com­mit­ment to require IFRS as issued by the IASB around the globe is not a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for in­tro­duc­ing carve-ins. On the contrary, Europe should show lead­er­ship in reaf­firm­ing its com­mit­ment to IFRS. This in turn would increase its ability to influence the de­vel­op­ment of IFRS, which the EU should continue to actively do as part of the IASB’s due process. 

ESMA also states that the current en­dorse­ment criteria should not be changed as the current en­dorse­ment process already provides the necessary safe­guards to the European public good, by providing the pos­si­bil­ity for the non-en­dorse­ment of a standard, which is not conducive to European public good.

Please click to access the press release on the ESMA website, which offers a quick overview over ESMA's position as well as access to the letter of response and the completed ques­tion­naire.