November

Summary of the October 2018 ASAF meeting now available

07 Nov 2018

The staff of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) have made available a summary of the discussions of the Accounting Standards Advisory Forum (ASAF) meeting held in London on 4 October 2018.

The topics covered during the meeting were the following (numbers in brackets are ref­er­ences to the cor­re­spond­ing para­graphs of the summary):

  • Financial in­stru­ments with char­ac­ter­is­tics of equity (1–18): The ASAF members discusses views and feedback on the Dis­cus­sion Paper Financial In­stru­ments with Char­ac­ter­is­tics of Equity issued in June 2018.
  • IFRS 3 Business Combinations reference to the Conceptual Framework (19–27): ASAF members discussed problems that could arise if an existing reference in IFRS 3 to the Framework for the Preparation and Presentation of Financial Statements were replaced with a reference to the 2018 Conceptual Framework.
  • Extended external reporting (28–36): ASAF members gave feedback on the New Zealand’s External Reporting Board’s research on preparers of corporate reports and users of EER information.
  • Accounting policies and accounting estimates (37–50): ASAF members provided their views on the definition of accounting estimate and accounting policy and were updated on feedback received from the IFRS Interpretations Committee.
  • Rate-regulated activities (51–58): ASAF members provided their views on disclosure objectives and requirements for defined rate regulation.
  • Extractive activities (59–64): The ASAF members provided information on what significant changes since the issuance of the 2010 Discussion Paper Extractive Activities.
  • Project updates and agenda planning (65–70): ASAF members discussed the proposed agenda for the December 2018 ASAF meeting, disclosure initiative, and goodwill and impairment.

A full summary of the meeting is available on the IASB's website.

Pre-meeting summaries for the November IASB meeting

07 Nov 2018

The IASB is meeting on Wednesday 14 and Thursday 15 November 2018. 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 Wednesday sessions start with the Board considering whether to defer the effective date of IFRS 17 Insurance Contracts (and the the related temporary exemption to IFRS 9 Financial Instruments) by a year. 

In the Primary Financial Statements discussion, the staff are recommending that EBITDA not be a required sub-total and that if an entity does use that term the measure must be calculated as “profit or loss minus all interest income and plus all interest expense, income tax, and depreciation and amortisation.”  They also recommend that the Board develop non-mandatory illustrative examples to accompany a revised IAS 1 Presentation of Financial Statements, remove the requirement in IAS 1:82(b) to present “finance costs” in the statement(s) of financial performance and clarify how the minimum line items are presented.

The Board will discuss three implementation issues. The staff are recommending changes to the proposed amendments to IAS 16 Property, Plant and Equipment in relation to accounting for the proceeds from selling any items produced while testing an asset. The staff are now recommending that the proceeds not be recognised as income, but continue to be deducted from the cost of the asset. The staff are recommending that the Board not start a project on accounting for cryptocurrencies or ICOs. Instead, they think the Board should monitor developments in these areas and ask the IFRS Interpretations Committee to consider issuing an Agenda Decision on the accounting for cryptocurrency holdings. Lastly, the staff are recommending that the Exposure Draft proposing amendments to IAS 37 Provisions, Contingent Liabilities and Contingent Assets in relation to costs of fulfilling a contract also propose that early application be permitted.

The staff describe how they expect to manage the Management Commentary project using three work streams. The staff also set out the recommended objective of management commentary.

The Thursday sessions start with recommendations on how the Board should finalise proposed amendments to IAS 1 in relation to Classification of Liabilities as Current or Non-current.

The Board will consider a recommendation to update a reference to the Conceptual Framework in IFRS 3 Business Combinations

The proposed model for Rate-regulated Activities supplements the information provided by applying current IFRS Standards. The staff have assessed how the proposed model interacts with those other Standards. The papers also include recommendations about what information should be presented about rate-regulated activities.

More in­for­ma­tion

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

IFRS Foundation announces technology initiative

05 Nov 2018

The IFRS Foundation has announced the launch of its technology initiative. The technology initiative will consider how changes in technology may affect the work done by the IASB in certain areas.

Specifically, the technology initiative will investigate how automation, AI, and the consumption of big data may affect accounting, financial reporting, standard-setting process, and stakeholder engagement.

For more information, see the press release on the IASB’s website.

November 2018 IASB meeting agenda posted, IFRS 17 effective date to be discussed

03 Nov 2018

The IASB has posted the agenda for its next meeting, which will be held at its offices in London on 14 and 15 November 2018. There are seven topics on the agenda, most notably IFRS 17 'Insurance Contracts' and a possible deferral of the effective date of the standard.

The paper prepared by the staff on IFRS 17 provides background to the discussion and considers the implications of exploring amendments to IFRS 17 on the effective date of IFRS 17 and on the fixed expiry date for the temporary exemption to IFRS 9. It then asks two questions of the Board:

  • Given the Board plans to consider whether to explore amendments to IFRS 17, should the mandatory effective date of IFRS 17 be deferred by one year to 2022?
  • If the Board were to defer the mandatory effective date of IFRS 17 by one year, should the fixed expiry date for the temporary exemption to IFRS 9 in IFRS 4 also be deferred to 2022?

The full agenda for the meeting can be found here. We will post any updates to the agenda, our comprehensive pre-meeting summaries as well as observer notes from the meeting on this page as they become available. The IFRS 17 paper is available here on the IASB website.

Insurance contracts transition resource group meeting rescheduled

01 Nov 2018

The meeting for the next transition resource group (TRG) for IFRS 17 ‘Insurance Contracts’ has been rescheduled from 4 December 2018 to 4 April 2019.

The TRG meeting has been rescheduled to allow additional time for submission of implementation questions and due to the limited number and narrow scope of submissions received since the September 2018 TRG meeting. For more information, see the press release on the IASB’s website.

EFRAG publishes two FICE bulletins

01 Nov 2018

The European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG) has issued two bulletins to help constituents better understand the IASB’s discussion paper DP/2018/1 'Financial Instruments with Characteristics of Equity' and participate in the debate on it.

The two bulletins cover (1) the classification criteria included in the DP and (2) the presentation and disclosure requirements included in the DP.

Both bulletins can be accessed through the press release on the EFRAG website.

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