UPDATE: Changes to International Accounting Standards

In the Winter 2003 issue of Financial Services Quarterly, we foreshadowed the impending move to adoption of the International Financial Reporting standards. The International Accounting Standards Board has revised two International Accounting Standards that relate to financial instruments.

The revised standards are:

• Standard 32, which sets out requirements for the presentation of financial instruments and identifies information that should be disclosed about them in order to assist others to assess the risk that an entity faces; and
  
  
• Standard 39, which specifies when and how financial assets and liabilities should be reported, requires derivatives to be accounted at fair value and restricts the use of hedge accounting. Further revision of this standard is expected in March to simplify some hedge accounting for banks and other financial institutions.

New Zealand versions of these International Accounting Standards will be released later this year by the Financial Reporting Standards Board (the FRSB).

The FRSB aims to have International Financial Reporting Standards available for use by New Zealand from 1 January 2005 and have mandatory application of the standards from 2007.

For more information, click here to link to the press release on the International Accounting Standards Board website.

Enquiries and information

For more information on any of the cases, articles and features in Financial Services Quarterly, please email Rachel Gowing or call on 64 9 916 8825.