Have You Heard? – IFRS 17 News

For more on our IFRS 17 Insurance Contracts course, click here.

The IASB cast a ballot to postpone the effective date of IFRS 17 Insurance Contracts to the 1st of January, 2023.

In addition, the IASB casted a ballot to extend the fixed expiry date of temporary exemption from applying IFRS 9 in IFRS 4 to annual reporting periods starting on or after the 1st of January, 2023.

IFRS 17 pioneer, Alex Bertolotti of PwC had this to say: “The extra year gives some insurers a chance to consider how to derive more business value from their extensive IFRS17 projects. For others, it will de-risk the delivery timetable. The additional time will also be welcome as insurers consider how they can use IFRS 17 to tell a clearer and more understandable story about their company.”

Ralph Ovsec, Senior Director at protection and reinsurance representative Willis Towers Watson, has likewise remarked and said that the deferred date tends to various worries that have been raised.

“We encourage companies to continue to press forward at current pace and use this additional time to strengthen their processes and procedures as well as allow for more testing, dry runs and contingencies. We also believe a shared effective implementation date for IFRS 17 and IFRS 9 will avoid temporary earnings mismatches that would otherwise exist and reduce implementation costs.

“The current global environment adds significant resource and time constraints to insurers’ operations, and this additional respite will reduce those near-term pressures on insurers,” said Ovsec.

For more from The IFRS Foundation on IFRS 17, click here