The Financial Accounting Standards Board has decided to revert to a Generally Accepted Accounting Principles approach to insurance contracts, scaling back its joint project with the International Accounting Standards Board, Tammy Whitehouse of Compliance Week reports.
The joint project which, according to its stated objective on the FASB’s website, is “intended to improve, simplify, and converge the financial reporting requirements for insurance contracts and to provide investors with decision-useful information,” was drastically cut back and altered following a FASB meeting last Wednesday. Both the FASB and the IASB were pushing for convergence in an attempt to bring U.S. insurers’ accounting standards in line with those elsewhere, which would have helped with cross-border investing, according to the Financial Times.
