IFRS 17 Taskforce Update – July 2017

IFRS 17 will result in significant changes to the accounts of life, general and health insurance companies in Australia, and major changes will be needed to actuarial work supporting those accounts.

Taskforce scope and aims

This Taskforce was established in December 2016, is chaired by Ian Laughlin, and its core membership includes representatives from General insurance, Life insurance and Health insurance practice areas; Industry and Big Four accounting firms; New Zealand Society of Actuaries; APRA; and the Accountants and Actuaries Liaison Committee (AALC).

The Taskforce scope includes:

• Production of technical guidance (for the Australian profession in particular), with an ambition to produce the first iteration by end 2017 initially in the form of information notes – this is being delivered by the technical work-streams (see below);
• Coordinating with third parties and other professional bodies – e.g. APRA, ASIC, ATO, Treasury, AALC, AASB, IAA (International Actuarial Association), industry bodies, analyst community etc. This coordination is led by Ian Laughlin.
• Actuaries Institute communications which covers interaction and communications with Council and members, and coordination with Practice Committees. This coordination is led by Trang Duncanson.

Six technical work-streams have been created under the Taskforce, to enable faster progress on key items requiring guidance. The technical work-streams and the Taskforce lead contact details are shown in the table below.

While each of the technical work-streams have their respective focus areas, the aims of each are aligned. Where relevant, the streams will aim to create examples to illustrate the nuances.

*the lead is supported by numerous volunteers from our membership across Life, General Insurance and Health.

Taskforce activities to date

• Interaction with third parties:
  • Members of the Taskforce have met with APRA, ASIC, AALC, AASB, ATO, Treasury, FSC and ICA. Where contact has been made there has been real interest in what we are doing and a ready willingness to co-operate. 
  • There has been ongoing interaction with the IAA, and in particular feedback has been provided to them on a proposed monograph on risk adjustment as well as International Actuarial Notes received from them that the relevant work-streams will consider in their work.
• Technical work-streams
  • There has been a pleasing number of volunteers in response to our recent requests for assistance, and each of these work-streams are now mostly fully resourced. In addition, each of the work-streams have had several meetings to agree their scope of work, and by the end of July 2017 we will have come up with a more detailed 6mth delivery plan.
  • To progress each work-stream, the short term approach is to prepare a Q&A by topic, as this will facilitate both the discussion meetings and engagement with the membership, as well as in the drafting of the guidance notes in due course. We also recognised that further international (actuarial) information notes were being developed, and that a core need of our work-streams was to consider these and to extract the useful and relevant parts for our Australian membership.

High level calendar of activities of Taskforce and its workstreams

Recent relevant articles and links:

• Video: IASB Chairman Hoogervorst introduces IFRS 17
• IFRS 17: The IAA’s Three Layers of Support
• IFRS17 to usher in ‘financial transformation’ – iFoA’s The Actuary 

• Insurance Contracts IFRS enters the Home Straight – Actuaries Digital

Taskforce Workstream Contact Details:

Grant Robinson
David Rush
Brendan Counsell
Brett Pickett
Benoit Laganiere
Hoa Bui

If you have any general questions please contact our Actuaries Institute representative on this task-force who will be able to direct you to the right person: Lily Meszaros at Lily.Meszaros@actuaries.asn.au or by phone +61 (0) 2 9239 6121.

CPD: Actuaries Institute Members can claim two CPD points for every hour of reading articles on Actuaries Digital.