28 November 2012
The International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) has published today for
public comment proposals for limited changes to the classification and
measurement requirements for financial instruments under IFRS 9: Financial
Instruments.
The proposals form part of a wider project to reform
accounting for financial instruments, and are part of the Classification and
Measurement phase of that project. The IASB published new classification and
measurement requirements for financial assets in 2009 and for financial
liabilities in 2010. However, in January 2012 the IASB decided to consider
limited amendments in order to:
Because IFRS 9 is fundamentally sound and
because some entities have already adopted or prepared to adopt IFRS 9 as
previously published, the IASB sought to minimise changes to the requirements.
The amendments are therefore consistent with the business model driven
classification structure in IFRS 9. The Exposure Draft proposes the
introduction of a fair value through other comprehensive income (FVOCI)
measurement category for debt instruments that would be based on an entity´s
business model.
IASB Chairman Hans Hoogervorst said:
"We were
clear when IFRS 9 was introduced in 2009 that it would be necessary to consider
revisiting the interaction between IFRS 9 and the Insurance Contracts project
once the insurance contract model was developed sufficiently.
"In
addition, this limited-scope review has given us an opportunity to propose
aligning IFRS and US GAAP more closely, in this important area of financial
reporting."
The Exposure Draft can be accessed via the project website or
on the 'Comment
on a proposal' section of the ifrs.org website. A high level
summary of the proposals can be found here.
End
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Mark Byatt, Director of
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7246 6472
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Chris Welsh, Communications Manager, IFRS Foundation
Telephone: +44 (0)20
7246 6495
Email: cwelsh@ifrs.org