The IIF submitted a comment letter to the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) Exposure Draft ED/2019/7 General Presentation and Disclosures.

In the letter, the IIF expresses its support for the IASB’s initiative to improve how information is communicated in financial statements. Given that financial reporting is a key instrument for companies to communicate relevant financial information to their investors and other stakeholders, the IIF and its member firms understand the importance that regulators, standard setters, and market participants work together to further improve comparability and transparency of companies’ performance reporting.

However, the IIF also expresses the view that the specific changes proposed in the Exposure Draft will not provide more useful information for the banking industry. For instance, while the introduction of the ‘Operating Profit or Loss’ subtotal might be sensible for entities with significant income and expenses in other categories of the statement of profit or loss, this subtotal would be almost redundant for a typical bank. The comment letter provides further feedback and suggestions which have been informed by discussions of the IIF Senior Accounting Group.