The latest update of Financial Instruments, Insurance Contracts, Leases and Revenue Recognition discussions

Following is the report from IASB latest meeting on 12 April to 15 April, 2011 which was dropped into my inbox mail on April 20, 2011.

The IASB met in London from Tuesday 12 April to Friday 15 April. The sessions on Tuesday and Wednesday and on Thursday morning were held jointly with the US-based FASB.

The joint discussions focused on four projects: revenue recognition, leases, insurance contracts, and impairment of financial assets. The IASB-only sessions focused on hedge accounting (which the FASB joined by video) and an update of activities of the IFRS Interpretations Committee.

The boards discussed uncertain consideration in relation to revenue recognition and leases. The revenue recognition sessions also focused on allocating the transaction price, licences and rights to use, fulfilment costs, and sale and repurchase agreements. The leases sessions also focused on the definition of a lease and whether there should be one or two accounting approaches for leases.

The session on insurance focused on the use of a 'top-down approach' to determine a discount rate.

The impairment sessions included consideration of feedback from the outreach activities and comment letters on the joint supplementary document Financial Instruments: Impairment, interest income recognition and the definition of amortised cost and whether to discount a loss estimate.

In the sessions on hedge accounting the IASB began its redeliberations on the exposure draft Hedge Accounting and discussed the objective of hedge accounting and accounting for 'funding swaps', designating risk components of financial instruments that bear interest below a benchmark rate (the 'sub-LIBOR' issue), the eligibility of non-derivative financial instruments as hedging instruments (including the interaction with the fair value option) and macro hedge accounting.

During board week Sir David Tweedie, Chairman of the IASB, and Leslie Seidman, Chairman of the FASB, recorded an interview in which they review the achievements of the convergence programme so far and the time line for completing the remaining elements of the programme. To listen to the interview and read a transcript, please click here : Interview with Sir David Tweedie and Leslie Seidman regarding the timeline for completing the convergence programme

The topics discussed at the joint IASB/FASB board meeting were:

• Financial instruments: impairment
• Insurance contracts
• Leases
• Revenue recognition

The topics discussed at the IASB Board meeting were:

• Financial instruments: hedge accounting
• IFRS Interpretations Committee - update from last meeting