The IASB and FASB embark on additional outreach activities on their Financial Statement Presentation Project
01 July 2010
The IASB and FASB started today their programme of extended outreach to stakeholders on the joint project on financial statement presentation by posting a staff draft of proposed standards on their respective websites. The draft reflects the cumulative tentative decisions made by the boards concluding with their joint meeting in April 2010.
In the recently issued Progress Report on Commitment to Convergence of Accounting Standards and a Single Set of High Quality Global Accounting Standards, the FASB and IASB committed themselves to engaging in a focused and targeted outreach programme on the financial statement presentation project before finalising and publishing an exposure draft. The boards decided that a draft of the proposed standards would be an effective way of facilitating their outreach activities.
Based on the staff draft, the additional outreach activities to be undertaken over the coming months will focus on two areas:
(1) the perceived benefits and costs of the proposals, and
(2) the implications of the proposals for financial reporting by financial services entities.
In particular, the staff plan:
- to ask users of financial statements to evaluate how the proposed changes to the organisation of, and information presented in, financial statements would benefit their analysis and resource allocation decisions.
- to ask preparers of financial statements to evaluate the effort and cost involved in adopting these proposed changes in their unique circumstances.
- to meet preparers and users of the financial statements of financial services entities to discuss the proposed changes.
- to gather additional information about benefits and costs by doing more field work on the proposals in the staff draft, including additional field testing and/or experimental research.
The Financial Statement Presentation project team is seeking banks, building societies and credit unions to participate in a field test of the Financial Statement Presentation Staff Draft issued July 1, 2010. Understanding the operationality and usefulness of the proposed presentation model with regard to financial institutions is important to the boards and the staff. If you are a bank, building society, or credit union interested in participating in the FSP field test, click here to send us your information. If you have any questions, contact Regenia Cafini, FASB Project manager, at rdcafini@fasb.org
The boards plan to complete the additional outreach activities towards the end of 2010. They will review the tentative decisions reached to date - as reflected in the staff draft - in the light of the feedback received with the view to publishing an exposure draft in early 2011. While neither the FASB nor the IASB is formally inviting comments, they welcome input from interested parties.
More information about the project and contact information is available on the boards’ websites http://go.ifrs.org/FSP and www.fasb.org.