Insurance contract

Introduction IFRS 17 Insurance contracts

Introduction IFRS 17 Insurance contracts – More than 20 years in development, IFRS 17 represents a complete overhaul of accounting for insurance contracts. The new standard applies a current value approach to measuring insurance contracts and recognises profit as insurers provide services and are released from risk. The profit or loss earned from underwriting activities are reported separately from financing activities. Detailed note disclosures explain how items like new business issued, experience in the year, cash receipts and payments, and changes in assumptions affected the performance and the carrying amount of insurance contracts.

IFRS 17 establishes principles for the recognition, measurement, presentation and disclosure of insurance contracts issued, reinsurance contracts held and investment contracts with discretionary participation features an entity … Read more

Insurance modelling

Insurance modelling – The estimates of future cash flows should incorporate all reasonable and supportable information available without undue cost or effort about amount, timing and uncertainty of those future cash flows. To accomplish this, an entity should estimate the expected value of the full range of possible outcomes. Estimates and assumptions should be unbiased (that is, neither conservative nor optimistic). Insurance modelling

The objective of considering the full range of all possible outcomes is to incorporate all reasonable and supportable information. An insurer is not required to identify every possible scenario. Explicit scenarios are not required if the result meets the objective. However, a single scenario based on the most likely outcome or the more-likely-than-not outcome would not meet … Read more

General model of measurement of insurance contracts

The general model of measurement of insurance contracts in IFRS 17 is based on estimates of the fulfilment cash flows and contractual service margin.

Contractual service margin

Contractual service margin – The fourth element of the building blocks in the general model is the contractual service margin (the CSM). This is a component of the asset or liability for the group of insurance contracts that represents the unearned profit the entity will recognise as it provides services in the future.

Here is how the contractual service margin fits into the general model of measurement of insurance contracts. The general model is based on the following estimation parameters:

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Fulfilment cash flows

Fulfilment cash flows comprise: IFRS 17 Insurance contracts Contents

Fulfilment cash flows represent cash flows within the boundary of an insurance contract, Those cash flows are related directly to the fulfilment of the contract, including those for which the entity has discretion over the amount or timing. IFRS 17 provides the following examples of such cash flows [IFRS 17 B65]:

  • Premiums and related cash flows Fulfilment cash flows
  • Claims and benefits, including reported claims
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Hold to collect and sell

Under the 'hold to collect and sell’ business model, the objective is to both collect the contractual cash flows and sell the financial asset for cash

Hedge accounting

Hedge accounting If investors purchase a high level of risk security, they may want to reduce risk with an opposing item purchase referred to as a hedge

Service or insurance contract?

Service or insurance contract – Some contracts meet the definition of an insurance contract but their primary purpose is to provide services for a fixed fee. An entity issuing such contracts may choose to apply IFRS 15 to them if, and only if all of the following conditions are met:

Identification of Fixed fee contracts for services:

All of the following three conditions apply to a fixed fee contract for services:

Non-risk-specific price

Setting the price for an individual customer does not reflect the entity’s assessment of the risk specific to that customer

YES

Compensation by service not cash

Cash payments are not made to customers

YES

Use, not cost, drives Insurance risk

The risk transferred by the contract arises

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