Pre-meeting summaries for the April IASB meeting

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03 Apr, 2019

The IASB will meet at its offices in London on 9–11 April 2019. We have posted our pre-meeting summaries for the meeting that allow you to follow the IASB’s decision making more closely. For each topic to be discussed, we summarise the agenda papers made available by the IASB staff and point out the main issues to be discussed by the IASB and the staff recommendations.

The Board will consider the package of amendments to IFRS 17 Insurance Contracts it has been considering since June 2018. The staff conclude that none of the amendments either unduly disrupts implementation, or where there could be disruption, that the potential disruption is justified. In June 2018 the Board decided to propose some minor changes that it planned to include in the next Annual Improvements cycle. These will instead be included with the Exposure Draft for the package of IFRS 17 amendments. The staff also recommend that the effective date of IFRS 17 and of the proposed amendments be for annual periods beginning on or after 1 January 2022 (with earlier application permitted). The staff will be seeking clearance from the Due Process Oversight Committee to have a shorter than normal comment period.

The Board will consider the feedback it received on the Exposure Draft Accounting Policies and Accounting Estimates (Amendments to IAS 8). The staff’s preliminary view is that the Board should proceed with the project.

The project looking at goodwill and impairment returns to the Board. The staff recommend that the acquirer of a business be required to provide information to help a user of the financial statements assess whether a business combination was a good investment decision and whether that business is performing as expected. The paper sets out the recommended disclosures.

In Dynamic Risk Management the staff recommend that negative balances within the target profile should not be permitted within the DRM model; the changes to the risk management strategy and the target profile must occur infrequently; and the risk management strategy must be clearly documented within a specified time horizon and cannot be defined in a way that is contingent. They also recommend that separate line items in the primary financial statements should not be required for derivatives designated in the DRM model from other derivatives or for accumulated changes in fair value of designated derivatives. That information would be provided in the notes to the financial statements. Also, net interest margin should include the aligned portion but not the misaligned portion.

For the Disclosure Initiative the Board will be asked for clearance to proceed with an Exposure Draft to propose adding two examples to the Materiality Practice Statement related to accounting policies.

The Board will consider the potential to explore a form of predecessor approach for some business combinations under common control.  

In the Primary Financial Statements project the staff recommend that the Board clarify that MPMs (management performance measures) are subject to the general requirement that information included in the financial statements must provide a faithful representation. They also recommend that entities can only identify a measure as an MPM if they use the same measure in their public communications. The staff also have recommendations to clarify presentation issues related an entity’s “main business activities.”

There are also updates on Implementation Matters, the Research Programme and (orally) Management Commentary.  

More information

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

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