IAS 39의 기본 principle은 의외로reasonably하게 straightforward 합니다. IAS 39는 모든 금융자산과 부채들이B/S (대차대조표)에 recognised되는 것을 require하는데 여기엔 모든 파생상픔들도 포함이 됩니다. 그런데 Historically, 파생상품은B/S에서 recognised되지 않았습니다. The problem is in the detail application of the standard to particularly complex financial instruments. 첫째로, financial statement에서 금융상품을 recognising하는데에 있어서, 이러한 문제점은 broadly하게 발생합니다 when the company signs the contract to get involved in the financial instruments (cash or derivatives) so, signing a piece of paper, authorising a broker to buy some amount of shares.
그런데, 이 recognition이 어렵습니다. It should happen when the company loses control of the financial instruments.
IAS 39의 제일 큰 문제는 바로 금융상품 카테고리입니다. IAS 39 아래 6개의 카테고리가 있는데요.
1. Loans and receivables (L&R): These are loans and receivables originated by an enterprise and not held for trading and are measured at amortised cost.
2. Held to maturity (HTM): These are other fixed maturity investments, such as bonds, debt securities with a fixed mandatory redemption date preferred shares that an enterprise intends and is able to hold to maturity. This classification depends on management intent rather than objective evidence, IAS 39 imposes a somewhat punitive burden.
3. Financial assets held for trading (HFT): These are financial assets acquired for short term trading purposes of generating a profit from short-term fluctuations in price. For this purpose, derivative assets are always deemed held for trading.
4. Available-for-sale financial asset (AFS): These are all financial assets that include all investments in equity instruments that are not held for trading.
5. Designated at fair value through profit or loss (optional) (FVPL)
6. Other financial liabilities- ordinary bank loans
문제는 위의 카테고리들이 상당히 rigid하고 flexible하지 못하다는 것입니다. 그래서 when something is categorised into one of categories, this drives its initial and subsequent measurement in the financial instruments over a period of time. There are very few movements allowed between these categories. Once you have categorised the financial instruments, it is very difficult to change the category. The categories do fall into two different pools. Firstly, the ones that require the fair value of accounting, so these are the ones where the instruments should be measured at their fair value which is normally a market price or price derived from a model. Two broad types of categories within fair value are ‘available for sale’ and ‘held for trading’. Both of these should be measured at fair value (FV) initially. The difference between the categories is what happens in subsequent years. An available-for-sale financial instrument is measured at FV every single year, however any gains or losses year on year, go through a special reserve, so they do not hit the profit in the income statement. A held-for-trading financial instrument, in contrast, is also measured at FT year on year, but the gains and losses year on year do go through the income statement. Therefore, held-for-trading financial instruments can make your income statement highly volatile and hard to predict. This is one of the reasons why the banks really do not like this method.
The other categories denoted in IAS 39, all require financial instruments not to be measured at fair value but to be measured at their costs. The costs would be loans receivables, held-to-maturity, and other financial liabilities. There is a special way of measuring the cost, the amortised cost which includes the full transaction costs, such as commissions, fees, securities exchanges and transfer taxes.
We have a draft accounting standard, called IFRS 9 which will replace IAS 39. It only covers financial assets at the moment and it will not come until 2013. The idea behind this standard is that those six categories will be simplified and it should be easier to apply the measurement rules. The other phases of the project include ‘how to measure, classify and present liabilities and this process is on-going and also another controversial part of accounting for financial instruments, which is what to do about impairments, possible losses. So, in the sub-prime crisis, we had institutions with books of financial assets (mortgage books) with possible impairments, because people were not affordable to pay their mortgages. So the issue of how to account impairments is very controversial.
The IASB have responded to pressure and they have announced that they expect there will be massive changes in the way that impairments in financial assets are accounted for and there has been a quite a lot of discussion in the press that how much is it going to cost, particularly the banks in terms of changing their computer software systems and their methods of reporting. So again, this one is in the working progress at the moment.