IASB November 2007

The Board’s discussion paper Preliminary Views on Insurance Contracts states that the project on insurance contracts will address accounting by policyholders for their rights under insurance contracts (‘policyholder accounting’). However, the paper does not address policyholder accounting because the Board has not viewed policyholder accounting as a high priority.

At this meeting, the Board discussed the process for dealing with this topic. The Board noted that forthcoming responses to the FASB’s Invitation to Comment on insurance contracts, published in August 2007, may provide further information on issues relating to policyholder accounting. The Board observed that its further work on accounting by insurers may benefit from insights provided by considering policyholder accounting. At this stage, the Board expects to deal with policyholder accounting in an exposure draft without first publishing a discussion paper.