Insurance Accounting Newsletter — Issue 20, April 2011

Published on: 28 Apr 2011

This edition is entitled Project timetable extended by a few additional months.

The International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) continued with their joint meetings at a reduced pace in April after the very intense sessions of February and March. The plan to continue with the same intensity of the last few months seems to be less certain though. In a podcast released on Thursday 14 April the chairmen of IASB and FASB commented on the convergence timetable of their priority projects (insurance contracts, financial instruments, leases and revenue from customers’ contracts) and announced that:

“After evaluating the issues yet to be addressed we jointly concluded that, without extending the work out indefinitely, we all could benefit from a few more months to develop these standards, some of which really go to the core issues of many companies.”

The next joint meeting of the two Boards is scheduled for 16-20 May, although meetings on insurance have been scheduled for 27 April, 4 May, and 11-12 May. At this point, the Boards are expected to discuss possible presentation solutions to the accounting volatility issue on 27 April; for the other meetings there is not yet a clear indication of what will be on the agenda.

The possibility of the insurance project being extended to allow its quality to “to withstand the test of time”, to use Leslie Seidman’s words from her joint podcast with Sir David Tweedie noted above, suggests that until a new detailed IASB and FASB work plan is released there is no short term certainty on the completion date of this project other than it will be some time in 2011.

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