When FRS 101 was originally published, the FRC committed to review the standard on an annual basis and update it to ensure that it maintains consistency with IFRS and remains cost-effective for groups. 

No amendments to FRS 101 have been made as a result of the 2017/18 review.  The FRC has also indicated that that detailed consideration of IFRS 17 Insurance Contracts will be deferred until a clearer picture of the progress of its endorsement is known.

The press release, amendments and feedback statement are available on the FRC website.

The purpose of the TRG is to seek feedback on potential issues related to implementation of IFRS 17 Insurance Contracts. During the meeting, the TRG discussed the following:

• Combination of insurance contracts
• Determining the risk adjustment for non-financial risk in a group of entities
• Cash flows within the contract boundary
• Boundary of reinsurance contracts held with repricing mechanisms
• Determining the quantity of benefits for identifying coverage units
• Implementation challenges outreach report
• Reporting on other questions submitted

A summary on the meeting and audio recordings of each session are available on the TRG meeting page on the IASB’s website. For more information, see Deloitte's related IFRS in Focus newsletter.

In addition, see the meeting summary and listen to the podcast on the IASB's website.

The FRC’s review covered the eight firms which have adopted the Audit Firm Governance Code and included 5 key areas, being design, implementation, monitoring, tone at the top, and independent oversight. In addition to the key areas they also considered some specific challenges to achieving an appropriate audit culture and what stakeholders such as investors and audit committee chairs thought of audit culture. The FRC found evidence that firms are investing “considerable” time and effort on their firm-wide culture.

The report includes examples for other firms to consider adopting, areas of common strength among the firms as well as key areas of improvement. The FRC indicates that “whilst progress made by individual firms may differ, there are a number of key areas where more should be done by the firms to establish, promote and embed an appropriate audit culture”.

These include:

• giving additional prominence to audit specific behaviours and values within the firms ’ cultural design, including the fundamental principles of integrity, objectivity, independence and professional scepticism that underpin high quality audit;
• ensuring that all audit partners and staff appreciate that a good audit is of significant societal value and helps to underpin transparency and integrity in business;
• balancing the firms’ robust processes to sanction poor quality work or behaviour with better recognition of positive contributions to high audit quality;
• further developing the firms’ root cause analysis (“RCA”) techniques to identify the behavioural or cultural factors that contributed to good and poor quality outcomes; and
• improving the firms’ monitoring of how successful they are at embedding their desired culture, including the INEs of the firms being more proactive when performing their assessment of the steps being taken by the firms to embed an appropriate culture.

A number of other findings are included within the full report. The FRC have included a summary of key findings, both strength and improvements by key area of focus..

The FRC plan to report publicly within the next three years on the actions firms have taken in relation to the findings of the thematic review. It will also consider culture, where relevant, in its planned 2018/19 thematic reviews on audit quality indicators (“AQIs”) and will follow up on aspects of this thematic review through its new audit monitoring and supervisory approach.

The press release and full review are available on the FRC website.

The agenda for the meeting is sum­marised below:

Agenda papers from this meeting are available on the IASB's website.

The review follows class inquiries undertaken by the Charity Commission which identify those charities who fail to file accounts properly in 2 consecutive years. These ‘double defaulting’ charities are then given the opportunity to file the required documents within a certain time period.

The Charity Commission review provides some wider lessons for trustees, auditors and independent examiners including:

• All registered charities with an income of over £25,000 and all charitable incorporated organisations (CIOs) irrespective of income, must file their trustees’ annual report and accounts and external scrutiny report with the Charity Commission within 10 months of their financial year end.
• It is the responsibility of trustees to ensure the right external scrutiny is carried out where required by charity law.
• It is the responsibility of trustees of charitable companies to ensure that their charity’s report and accounts are filed with both Companies House and the Charity Commission.

The review also highlights a number of resources to assist trustees and independent examiners on the preparation and scrutiny of the annual report and accounts.

The press release and report are available on the Charity Commission website.

More information about the issues is set out below:

Click to access all our comment letters to the IASB, IFRS Foundation, and IFRS Interpretations Committee.

The 13-minute podcast features discussions of the following topics:

• Revised Conceptual Framework for Financial Reporting (issued March 2018);
• Projects on (1) primary financial statements and (2) goodwill and impairment;
• Definition of ‘material’;
• Updates on the work to develop an accounting model for business combinations between companies that are owned by the same parent company.

The podcast can be accessed through the press release on the IASB website. More information on the topics discussed is available through our comprehensive notes taken by Deloitte observers of the April 2018 meeting.

IFAC surveyed 104 of its member organisations in 80 jurisdictions around the world for the report. Of these 80 jurisdictions 58% (46) have adopted IFRSs, 32% (26) have partially adopted IFRSs, and 10% (8) have not adopted IFRSs.

Jurisdictions that have fully adopted IFRSs (58%) have different processes to adopt the standards:

• The most common mode of adoption is through an endorsement process that may include translation and republication of IFRSs for application in the jurisdiction (33%).
• 23% of the jurisdictions have adopted through direct reference in law.
• 3% of the jurisdictions have eliminated the differences between its national standards and IFRS through a convergence process.

A common feature in almost all of the jusrisctions that have only partially adopted IFRSs (32%) is that IFRSs are required for the preparation of financial statements of some types of public interest entities, and national standards — which apply for all other companies — differ from IFRSs.

Out of the 10% of the jurisdictions that have not adopted IFRSs, accounting standards in 5 jurisdictions are established at the regional level. The remaining 3 jurisdictions require the use of national accounting standards, which are not in line with IFRSs.

Please click to access the full report on the IFAC website.

One of the sources of information for the impact analysis is a survey that was launched on 4 May. Please click for more information on the EFRAG website.

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 staff are recommending that the Committee not take the matter onto its agenda. The paper also 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.

The new issue relates to the Venezuelan Bolivar and its lack of exchangeability. This is a preliminary discussion on how, or whether, the Committee should respond.

The staff will also discuss work in progress.

The full agenda for the meeting and our pre-meeting summaries can be found here. We will update this page for any changes to the agenda and our Deloitte observer notes from the meeting as they become available.