Pre-meeting summaries for the January IASB meeting

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24 Jan, 2020

The IASB will meet in London on 28–30 January 2020 to discuss twelve topics. 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.

Provisions (Thu 0945-1030): The staff recommend that the Board add a project to amend IAS 37 to align the IAS 37 liability definition and requirements for identifying liabilities with the Conceptual Framework (including potentially withdrawing IFRIC 21); clarifying which costs to include in the measure of a provision; and specifying whether the rate at which an entity discounts a provision for the time value of money should reflect the entity’s own credit risk.

Amendments to IFRS 17 Insurance Contracts (Thu 1320-1535): The Board will discuss some of the topics where it had decided to consider the feedback from respondents further, specifically:

  • the scope exclusion from IFRS 17 for some credit card contracts (recommend confirm the proposed scope exclusion with some changes);
  • Transition—the prohibition from applying the risk mitigation option retrospectively (recommend to retain, unchanged);
  • Business combinations—contracts acquired in their settlement period (recommendation to retain, unchanged);
  • Interim Financial Statements (recommend changing the requirements); and
  • Asset for insurance acquisition cash flows—transition and business combinations (recommend changing the requirements).

IBOR Reform and the Effects on Financial Reporting (Thu 1050-1220): The Board will consider recommendation from the staff in relation to the end of application of the Phase 1 exceptions from specific hedge accounting requirements in IFRS 9 and IAS 39 in the context of interest rate benchmark reform (IBOR reform); the potential effects of IBOR reform on IFRS Standards other than those related to financial instruments accounting; and potential disclosure requirements to accompany the tentative decisions the Board has made during Phase 2 of the IBOR project.

Pension Benefits that Depend on Asset Returns (Wed 1530-1600): The staff are recommending that the Board consider amending IAS 19 to cap the projected cash flows when benefits vary with the level of returns on specified assets, so that they do not exceed the discount rate specified by IAS 19. The change would be to address the inconsistency in IAS 19 that the variability (risk) in the future asset returns is reflected only in the cash flows and not in the discount rate applied to those cash flows. The staff are asking Board members for comments.

Disclosure Initiative (Wed 1630-1800): The Board will continue its discussions of potential revisions to the disclosure requirements in IAS 19 and recommend that the Board refine some of its tentative decisions relating to defined benefit plans, multi-employer plans and group plans. 

IFRS 3 reference to the Conceptual Framework (Thu 0930-0945): The staff recommend that the effective date of the updated references to the Conceptual Framework in IFRS 3 be 1 January 2022. The new references would apply to business combinations that occur in any annual reporting period starting after that date, with earlier application permitted.

Subsidiaries that are SMEs (Tue 1100-1230): The staff recommend that the Board develop an ED as soon as possible proposing reduced disclosure requirements for subsidiaries that are SMEs.

Business Combinations under Common Control (Wed 1400-1530): The Board has decided that the acquisition method, as set out in IFRS 3, should be required for listed acquirers that have NCI. They have received feedback from some sectors that a predecessor should apply to all common-control business combinations. The staff recommend no change to the decisions already made.  The staff also set out their recommendations for recognition and measurement applying a predecessor approach.

The staff will give updates on:

  • the feedback received on the proposed update to the IFRS Taxonomy to reflect the amendments made to IFRS Standards in 2019 in response to IBOR reforms (Thu 1535-1605);
  • the ED for rate-regulated activities (Thu 1045-1050);
  • work being undertaken on research projects and the research pipeline (Thu 1030-1045); and
  • recent activities of the IFRS Interpretations Committee (Wed 1600-1615).

More information

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

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