Suchergebnisse

The International Accounting Standards Board (IASB, former IASC) has been working on a new international standard for insurance contracts based on fair value for about ten years now. However, details on how to measure such a value in practice were unclear for long time. Therefore the IASB decided to split the project into two phases: IFRS 4 as interim standard in phase I allowed insurers to mainly keep their former accounting models. Phase II was initiated by the publication of a Discussion Paper in May 2007. The Discussion Paper "Insurance Contracts" proposed accounting of insurance liabilities based on a so called "Current Exit Value". Facing severe criticism from both science and industry mainly concerning the reliability of such a hypothetical value, the IASB decided to go for a completely different direction and abandoned the view of a hypothetical transfer of the insurance portfolio. The measurement model that the IASB proposed within its Exposure Draft "Insurance Contracts" published in July 2010 aims at incorporating the insurer's own view in determining the value of insurance liabilities. The building blocks for the valuation of insurance liabilities remain an explicit, unbiased and probability-weighted estimate of the future cash flows, a discount rate that adjusts those cash flows for the time value of money and an explicit estimate of the effects of uncertainty about the amount and timing of those future cash flows. However, as the IASB does no longer pursue the Current Exit Value, there are significant changes to the determination of these building blocks. In this chapter we analyze to which extents the accounting model for insurance liabilities in the exposure draft is qualified to generate useful information to users of financial statements. Furthermore, we give recommendations about which fields need further adjustments in order to comply with decision usefulness as the overriding principle.