Accounting Standard Updates
Game Changing Insurance Regulations
In May 2015, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) issued Accounting Standards Update (ASU) No. 2015-09 “Disclosures about Short Duration Contracts.” The FASB was looking to (1) increase the decision usefulness of the information about an insurance company’s insurance liabilities, including the nature, amount, timing, and uncertainty of cash flows related to those liabilities and the effect of those cash flows on the statement of comprehensive income, and (2) improve comparability between insurance entities, regardless of the type of insurer issuing the contract.
Public insurance companies adopted the standard in their 2016 financial statements, but non-public insurance companies were provided another year before the adoption of the new disclosure requirements. As private insurance companies move toward adoption and public insurance companies are evaluating their disclosures, we thought it would be wise to look at what other insurance companies have done. We have surveyed numerous public insurance company disclosures and selected 22 insurance companies’ disclosures as examples. This survey, rather than indicate what your insurance company should disclose, is a compilation of what others have done. In the spirit of the intent of FASB, we think this survey can help insurers implementing ASU 2015-09 for the first time and those looking to enhance their current disclosures.
