There are seven topics on the agenda.

Tuesday 22 May

the Board will discuss the Primary Financial Statements project, focusing on aggregation and disaggregation of line items in the financial statements, criteria to help entities determine whether to analyse expenses by function or by nature and some remaining issues in relation to management performance measures (MPMs) and earnings per share (adjusted EPS) from the April 2018 Board meeting.

Wednesday 23 May

The Board will discuss disclosure initiative and an initial discussion of the development of guidance for the Board to use when developing and drafting disclosure objectives and requirements.

The staff will continue its analysis of Business Combinations under Common Control and what they describe as the Full Fair Value and Ceiling approaches.

For the project on Rate-regulated Activities the discussion moves on to consider how regulatory assets that are recognised in the model should be measured.

The Board will be asked to decide the form of consultation document that should be issued as the next step in the project on Goodwill and Impairment. The Board had asked the staff to provide it with some additional analysis when it considered this in April.

The Board will consider whether it needs to amend an illustrative example in relation to lease incentives that is included in the material accompanying IFRS 16 Leases.

For Insurance Contracts the Board will be given a summary of the Transition Resource Group held on 2 May and a report on implementation challenges.

More in­for­ma­tion

Our pre-meet­ing summaries are available on our May meeting note page and will be sup­ple­mented with our popular meeting notes after the meeting.

After a short introduction by EFRAG President Jean-Paul Gauzès who highlighted EFRAG's current efforts in connection with developing the draft endorsement advice (expected in September 2018, with a final endorsement advice expected in December 2018) and mentioned case studies, structured interviews, independent research, and briefing papers, the Parliamentarians raised a number of questions.

• Content of the standard. The standard itself was generally agreed to bring significant improvements to the accounting for insurance contracts; questions on the content were more related to detailed aspects. One question was for example on the level of aggregation and whether a high level of aggregation would lead to a loss of information, another one whether bank insurers have a problem with the compatibility of IFRS 9 and IFRS 17. The level of aggregation was acknowledged to be an issue where a trade-off has to be achieved; bank insurers were reported to be satisfied with deferring the application of IFRS 9 until 2021.
• Complexity and costs. There was also general agreement that the standard is complex (one Parliamentarian claimed that IFRS 17 is more complex for insurers than IFRS 9 was for banks) and that the costs for implementing it will be significant. In that context the question came up whether implementing the standard by 2021 was feasible. As regards the complexity and resulting costs, the EFRAG representatives shared the concern and stated that they would look in depth into the issue and the balance between the costs (mostly to the insurers) and the benefits (mostly to the investors). They warned that this might lead to having to compare quantitative information with qualitative information. The 2021 implementation date was acknowledged to become a topic of increasing discussion even though 3.5 years was considered to be generous and even though many insurers are signaling that they will be ready in time.
• Impact. It was asked whether the introduction of IFRS 17 would lead to changes in insurance products and prices. It was also noted that the United States do not apply IFRSs and would therefore not adopt IFRS 17 - would this pose a problem? The EFRAG representatives replied that insurers had so far signaled that products and prices would not change as a result of the application of IFRS 17. They also noted that while the United States are not on IFRSs they are working on an insurance project that "points in the same direction" regarding some important aspects. EFRAG would look closely into competition consequences.
• General. The EFRAG representatives were asked how many insurers had chosen to defer the application of IFRS 9 until 2021. The EFRAG President noted that he did not have any numbers yet but was expecting more information "in the coming weeks". It was also asked which jurisdictions saw the most resistance against IFRS 17. Again, the EFRAG President did not give a direct answer but treated the Parliamentarians to some private thoughts on national characteristics making out three groups of countries: those who are happy with general rules, those who are "word obsessed", and those who grumble first but then simply apply what has been decided.

A recording of the meeting is available on the ECON website. Please note that the recording covers the whole morning, which also saw the discussion of other topics. The exchange of views with EFRAG begins 1 hour and 50 minutes into the recording.

The CMAC is a group of professional financial analysts who meet three times a year with members of the IASB to provide the views of professional investors on financial reporting issues.

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

Participants will be asked to answer eight randomly selected questions from a pool of more than 50. The questions are based on the information in the revised Conceptual Framework published in March 2018.

The exposure draft proposes amendments to the Government Financial Reporting Manual (FReM) and is structured to illustrate the amendments proposed for each chapter for which an amendment is proposed. The consultation includes:

• An overview of IFRS 16.
• Applicability of IFRS 16 for public sector reporting entities.
• Proposed amendments to the FReM.

The effective date for the proposed amendments is 1 April 2019.

The press release and full consultation are available on the HM Treasury website.

Comments are invited until 31 July 2018.

The report for 2017 provides an overview of the IFRS Foun­da­tion’s ac­tiv­i­ties during the past year and sets out the Foun­da­tion’s and IASB’s priorities for 2018.

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

An agenda and details on how to register for the webcast can be found on the EFRAG website.

The Board will discuss the following:

• Primary financial statements:
  • Results from NSS disaggregation survey
  • Additional proposals on aggregation and disaggregation
  • Staff proposals on analysis of expenses
  • Outstanding issues on management performance measures (MPMs) and adjusted EPS
• Disclosure initiative — disclosure objectives
• Business combinations under common control
• Rate-regulated activities — measurement
• Goodwill and impairment
• Implementation of lease incentives (IFRS 16)
• Insurance contracts:
  • Summary of the TRG for IFRS 17 meeting held in May 2018
  • TRG for IFRS 17 submissions
  • TRG for IFRS 17 implementation challenges

The full agenda for the meeting can be found here. We will post any updates to the agenda, our comprehensive pre-meeting summaries as well as observer notes from the meeting on this page as they become available.

The Committee discussed two issues.

The accounting when an entity makes a voluntary payment to a tax authority in relation to a disputed amount was discussed initially in March. The paper includes a discussion on how the staff thinks the IAS 8 hierarchy should be applied when there is conflict between a definition in the new Conceptual Framework and a definition in IFRS Standards (and in the version of the Framework it is replacing). That matter will be taken back to the IASB.

The new issue relates to the Venezuelan Bolivar and its lack of exchangeability. This was a preliminary discussion on how, or whether, the Committee should respond. It will come back to the next meeting.

The staff also discussed work in progress.

Please click to access the detailed notes taken by Deloitte observers for the entire meeting.

The proposed amendments would introduce a new threshold that requires a company to consider the expected benefits to users of financial statements and the cost to the company of applying accounting policy changes that result from IFRS Interpretation Committe agenda decisions retrospectively.

Please click to access the eight page overview on the IASB website.