Papers for the upcoming IASB discussion of IFRS 17

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12 Oct 2018

At its upcoming meeting, the IASB will discuss IFRS 17 'Insurance Contracts' to determine whether the various concerns regarding the standard that have been brought to the IASB's attention require action of the Board.

Since IFRS 17 was issued in May 2017, the Board has been monitoring the implementation and has learned about concerns and implementation challenges, among them the issues identified in the EFRAG letter sent to the IASB last month. The Board had previously indicated that it would consider whether additional action is needed to address matters arising during implementation. The upcoming meeting on 24 October will be a first step in this assessment process.

Agenda paper 2C for the meeting reveals the criteria the staff of the IASB has developed for the Board to apply in assessing whether a concern warrants considering an amendment:

  1. the amendment would not result in significant loss of useful information relative to that which would be provided by IFRS 17 for users of financial statements and
  2. the amendment would not unduly disrupt implementation processes that are already under way or risk undue delays in the effective date of a standard that is needed to address many inadequacies in the existing wide range of insurance accounting practices.

The staff also notes that even if the Board agrees that any potential amendment to IFRS 17 meets the criteria, it does not mean that all amendments meeting these criteria are justified.

Agenda paper 2D for the meeting includes some background information and provides for each identified concern or implementation challenge:

  • an overview of the IFRS 17 requirements;
  • a summary of the Board’s rationale for setting those requirements;
  • an overview of the concern or implementation challenge expressed; and
  • staff preliminary thoughts.

The paper notes 25 identified concerns that are listed in paragraph 12 in a table offering an overview and referencing the subsequent paragraphs where the concern is dicussed in detail.

The Board will be asked to consider at a future meeting whether any of the concerns and implementation challenges indicate a need for standard-setting to amend the requirements of IFRS 17. There are no decisions expected at this meeting.

The papers for this session (currently scheduled for 15:15-17:45 on 24 October) are available on the IASB website (please scroll down). In addition to the two papers pointed out above, they also include a cover note, a summary of the TRG meeting held in September, and the TRG submission log.

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