This past Monday, I had the privilege of attending the National Investor Relations Institute’s (NIRI) annual liaison meeting with Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) board members and staff. FASB and NIRI organize the session each year to offer investor relations practitioners a chance to “discuss standards from the investor communications perspective.”
The Session was Excellent
FASB allotted three hours for the liaison meeting, giving us plenty of time for the formal agenda as well as informal conversation and Q&A. About 15 people attended from FASB, including two board members and staff members with a variety of responsibilities. The FASB group shared updates on their initiatives and projects. Among the subjects covered were convergence to international accounting standards (IFRS), the disclosure framework project, revenue recognition, leases and financial instruments.
Those of us attending with NIRI gave feedback to FASB about the challenges we face communicating with investors. Our comments generally focused on how the accounting framework helps or hinders our ability to present historical and prospective information so that investors can make informed investment decisions or recommendations.
Specific to the Insurance Industry
We had the opportunity during the session to spend a few minutes learning more about the work FASB is doing in conjunction with the IASB on proposed changes to the accounting for insurance contracts. (See the Update on Insurance Contracts – a Joint Project of the IASB and FASB – for full details of the project.)
I believe the discussion of the insurance contracts project was positive. It provided an opportunity to highlight – from the investor relations perspective – some of the potential problems the proposed changes might create for insurance-sector investor communications.
The FASB group was very interested in our input and acknowledged the high volume of investor feedback they have received about the insurance contract proposal. They stressed how open they remain to feedback on the topic. Continue reading →
Filed under: FASB/IASB, Important ideas, Investor Relations | Tagged: Accounting | 2 Comments »
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