Accounting is
the process of recording, classifying, reporting, analyzing and interpreting
the financial transactions. This process is intended to provide useful
information about a business entity’s financial status to users of financial
statements. In Turkey, accounting is governed by a common set of accounting
rules. These are basic concepts of accounting, generally accepted accounting
principles, national and international accounting and financial reporting
standards and legislation provisions. Ministry of Treasury and Finance, Capital
Markets Board of Turkey and Public Oversight Accounting and Auditing Standards
Authority currently require publicly owned companies to follow these rules.
Over time, all these organizations aim to align their regulations with
International Accounting and Financial Reporting Standards (IASs and IFRSs).
Since 2001, the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) has worked on a
set of these global standards. The IASB is an independent international
accounting standard setter based in London. On 18th May of 2018, the IASB
issued a new standard on insurance contracts. This new Standard, IFRS 17
Insurance Contracts, establishes a new accounting model and new disclosure
requirements. IFRS 17 can be seen as one of the most significant changes to
insurance accounting. It establishes principles for the recognition,
measurement, presentation and disclosure for insurance contracts issued,
reinsurance contracts held and investment contracts with discretionary
participation features issued. The objective of IFRS 17 is to ensure that
entities provide relevant information in a way that faithfully represents
insurance contracts. This information gives a basis for users of financial
statements to evaluate the effect that contracts within the scope on the
financial position, financial performance and cash flows of an entity. IFRS 17
should be applied for annual periods beginning on after January 1, 2021. IFRS
17 shall supersede the previous IFRS 4 Insurance Contracts. According to the
IASB, IFRS 4 was an interim standard that did not provide transparent and
comparable information about the effect of insurance contracts on financial
statements. The previous standard also allowed entities to use their national
accounting requirements. So, the IASB undertook a project to make insurers’
financial statements more transparent, comparable and consistent. IFRS 17 is
the result of this project. IFRS 17 brings a lot of innovative and important
changes to insurance accounting. One of these changes is about measurement
approaches. According to IFRS 17, there are three different measurement
approaches: the General Model Approach (the Building Block Approach), the
Premium Allocation Approach and the Variable Fee Approach. The General Model
Approach is the basic model that is applicable to all insurance contracts and
is based on a series of four building blocks. The first building block is the
estimation of future cash flows. IFRS 17 requires insurance companies to
estimate cash flow for an insurance contract. The second building block is discount
rate. The Standard requires insurance companies to use discount rates based on
market rates of the same currency, duration and level of liquidity. The third
building block is risk adjustment. Risk adjustments should represent the
compensation that the insurer requires for bearing the uncertainty in the
amount and timing of the cash flows. The fourth building block is the
contractual service margin. The contractual service margin is a component of
the carrying amount of the asset or liability for a group of insurance
contracts representing the unearned profit that the entity will recognize as it
provides services under the insurance contracts in the group. According to the
Standard, no gains are recognized in profit or loss at the inception of the
contract because any of contract’s performance obligations has not been
satisfied yet. For this reason, the contractual service margin cannot be
negative either at issue or subsequently. If the contract is onerous, then the
contractual service margin is equal to zero. IFRS 17 allows the spreading of
profits on insurance contracts over their duration. If the contractual service
margin is decreasing, then the losses should be recognized immediately. If it
is decreasing, then the profits should be firstly used to compensate previous
losses and the remaining amount should be recognized. The contractual service
margin should be amortized over the duration of a contract. Recognizing the
contractual service margin over the duration of a contract should be on a
systematic basis that reflects the remaining transfer of services and interest
should be accreted to reflect the time value of money. The objectives of this
study are to introduce the General Model Approach theoretically and show how
the value of an insurance contract should be measured, accounted and reported
under this approach.
IFRS Insurance Contracts General Model Approach Building Block Approach
UFRS 17 Sigorta Sözleşmeleri Genel Model Yaklaşımı Blok Yapı Yaklaşımı
Birincil Dil | Türkçe |
---|---|
Bölüm | Makale Başvuru |
Yazarlar | |
Yayımlanma Tarihi | 9 Şubat 2019 |
Yayımlandığı Sayı | Yıl 2019 |
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Öneri Dergisi
Marmara Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü
Göztepe Kampüsü Enstitüler Binası Kat:5 34722 Kadıköy/İstanbul
e-ISSN: 2147-5377