Companies following international accounting rules have a new standard on how to account for financial instruments, and it differs in a number of important ways from the standard that is expected to emerge in the United States by the end of the year.
The International Accounting Standards Board finalized its comprehensive revisions of the accounting rules for financial instruments when it issued IFRS 9 Financial Instruments in July, taking effect in 2018. “The biggest change is the new model for credit losses,” says Osman Sattar, an accounting specialist and director at Standard & Poor’s in London. “It is much more forward looking than what we currently have in existing standards.”
