IAS 19 — Discount rate

Date recorded:

Background

In October 2012, the Committee received a request for guidance on the determination of the rate used to discount post-employment obligations. The main concerns of the submitter were that:

  1. according to paragraph 83 of IAS 19 the discount rate should be determined by reference to market yields at the end of the reporting period on high quality corporate bonds (HQCB);
  2. IAS 19 did not specify which corporate bonds qualify as HQCB.

In particular, the submitter asked the Committee whether corporate bonds with an internationally recognised rating lower than “AA” could be considered to be HQCB. The submitter noted that two views existed in practice:

  1. only AA bonds were considered HQCB
  2. corporate bonds with a rating lower than AA could be considered HQCB

In its January 2013 meeting, the Committee requested the Staff to consult with the IASB:

  • to confirm that the underlying principle for the determination of the discount rate is set out in paragraph 84 of IAS 19 (2011), and is described as “the discount rate reflects the time value of money but not the actuarial or investment risk”;
  • to clarify about this sentence in paragraph 84;
  • to ask whether this sentence in paragraph 84 means that the objective for the discount rate for post-employment benefit obligations should be a risk-free rate; and
  • to confirm that IAS 19 should be amended to clarify that when government bonds are used to establish the discount rate in the absence of HQCBs, those government bonds used must themselves be high quality.

In the February 2013 IASB meeting, the majority of IASB members agreed.

At the March 2013 Committee meeting, the Staff noted that their proposed next steps were:

  • to bring to the May 2013 Interpretation Committee meeting a draft amendment to IAS 19 (narrow scope amendment) that will reflect the tentative decisions of the IASB in the February 2013 meeting;
  • to clarify in the draft amendment that in determining the discount rate an entity shall include corporate bonds with minimal or very low credit risk issued in other countries, provided that these bonds are issued in the currency in which the benefits are to be paid.

May 2013 meeting

Based on the previous discussions, the Staff provided recommended that:

  1. paragraph 84 of IAS 19 is amended to provide an objective for the discount rate assumptions;
  2. paragraph 83 of IAS 19 is replaced with non-authoritative implementation guidance to support the objective in (a).

The discussion started with the proposed wording in paragraph 84, but it soon became apparent that there were several views from the Committee members on what the objective of the discount rate was. It was acknowledged that IAS 19 was not a new standard and the Committee had to work within its remit; also, the guidance about HQCB had originally come from the US.

Some Committee members liked the proposed wording of paragraph 84 and some did not. One Committee member believed that removal of paragraph 83 would represent a fundamental change.

After a certain amount of general discussion during which some Committee members mentioned practical difficulties, the Chairman posed a question to the Committee about whether it should continue working on this given the amount of time and work the Committee and Staff had already spent on it. What the way forward might be?

Majority of the Committee members believed that the best way forward would be to focus on the narrow question of the original submission (i.e. whether AA and lower rated bonds can be considered as HQCB) instead of the fundamental changes to IAS 19.

The Staff was asked to go back to the November 2012 decisions and to prepare a new paper about what was considered a ‘high quality’ in the context of HQCB taking into account the fact that the economic dynamics and rates change over time. The paper will be discussed in the July 2013 meeting.

There was also a comment that the discussion about HQCB resembled a discussion about most reliable fair value measurement (i.e. Levels 1-3).  In other words, the principle was clear but obtaining data seemed to be a problem.

Correction list for hyphenation

These words serve as exceptions. Once entered, they are only hyphenated at the specified hyphenation points. Each word should be on a separate line.