At the crossroads: insurance accounting

Analysts face an assortment of accounting standards when looking at insurers’ financial reports, making them best placed to compare the worth of the different approaches. In this article Ian Dilks and Francesco Nagari of PricewaterhouseCoopers discuss how existing standards fall below expectations and the opportunity presented by IFRS Phase II for a new start

International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) were developed to improve transparency and comparability across businesses and borders. In 2004, IFRS for the insurance industry, IFRS 4 ‘Insurance Contracts’, was designed as a temporary measure while the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) worked with the industry to devise a permanent solution (IFRS Phase ll).