Dear national standard-setters,
Welcome to our newsletter dedicated to keeping you up to date on the activities of the IFRS Foundation.
The World Standard-setters Conference 2025 will take place in London on 29–30 September at the Hilton London Canary Wharf, South Quay, Marsh Wall, London, E14 9SH.
The conference will provide national standard-setters with the opportunity to receive an update on the IFRS Foundation’s activities and discuss them. Participants will be able to attend panel discussions with standard-setters and others, ask their own questions in interactive sessions with presenters, and network with fellow delegates, IFRS Foundation staff and members of the IASB and the ISSB.
The World Standard-setters Conference is open to all national standard-setters. The IFRS Foundation will invite two representatives from each national standard-setter to attend the conference in person and email registration information to hem in due course. In the meantime, if you have any questions about the conference, please use the contact us button below.
You can check out programmes and discussions from previous World Standard-setters conferences.
In November 2024, the IASB published the consultation Exposure Draft: Provisions—Targeted Improvements—Proposed amendments to IAS 37 aimed at improving the requirements for recognising and measuring provisions on company balance sheets. Provisions are liabilities of uncertain timing or amount. Investors seek transparent and comparable information about companies’ provisions in order to assess future cash flows and financial positions. The IASB’s targeted improvements would help companies apply the requirements more consistently and provide investors with more useful information.
The proposed amendments to IAS 37 Provisions, Contingent Liabilities and Contingent Assets would clarify how companies assess when to record provisions and how to measure them. The amendments would also require companies to provide more information about the measurement. The proposals would most likely be relevant for companies that have large long-term asset decommissioning obligations or are subject to levies and similar government-imposed charges.
The comment period for the Exposure Draft was open until 12 March 2025 and the IASB appreciates the feedback from national standard-setters and other stakeholders, which will be thoroughly analysed and discussed in the next few months.
You can watch the webcast Exposure Draft Provisions—Targeted Improvements in which IASB technical staff members explain the proposed targeted amendments to IAS 37 Provisions, Contingent Liabilities and Contingent Assets.
In December 2024, the IASB issued targeted amendments to help companies better report the financial effects of nature-dependent electricity contracts, which are often structured as power purchase agreements (PPAs). The IASB acted swiftly in view of the increased use of these contracts.
Nature-dependent electricity contracts help companies to secure electricity supplies from sources such as wind and solar power. The amount of electricity generated under these contracts can vary based on uncontrollable factors such as weather conditions. Current accounting requirements may not adequately capture how these contracts affect a company’s performance.
To allow companies to better reflect these contracts in their financial statements, the IASB has made targeted amendments to IFRS 9 Financial Instruments and IFRS 7 Financial Instruments: Disclosures. The amendments include:
The amendments are required to be applied for annual reporting periods beginning on or after 1 January 2026. Companies can apply the amendments earlier.
You can watch the webcast Contracts Referencing Nature-dependent Electricity—Targeted amendments to IFRS 9 and IFRS 7, in which IASB technical staff members explain the recent targeted amendments to IFRS 9 Financial Instruments and IFRS 7 Financial Instruments: Disclosures.
In February 2025, the IASB issued a major update to the IFRS for SMEs Accounting Standard, which is currently required or permitted in 85 jurisdictions. This Standard aims to balance the information needs of lenders and other users of SMEs’ financial statements with the resources available to SMEs. The Standard defines SMEs as entities without public accountability that prepare general purpose financial statements.
The update of this Standard is the outcome of a periodic comprehensive review of the Standard. Highlights include:
This update is effective for annual periods beginning on or after 1 January 2027, with early application permitted.
The IFRS for SMEs Accounting Standard was issued in 2009 to respond to the global demand for a simplified Accounting Standard for SMEs. This updated version is the third edition of the Standard.
The IASB launched a new podcast series dedicated to the third edition of the IFRS for SMEs Accounting Standard. In Episode 1, technical staff members describe the key updates to the Standard, the IASB’s approach to updating the Standard and its engagement with stakeholders throughout the review process.
In December 2024, the ISSB was delighted to welcome and support the International Organization of Securities Commissions’ (IOSCO’s) launch of its Growth and Emerging Markets (GEM) Committee Network for Adoption or Other Use of ISSB Standards (GEMC Network).
The announcement marked a significant step towards supporting the adoption or other use of ISSB Standards in jurisdictions represented in IOSCO's GEMC Network.
The initial cohort of members, representing 31 jurisdictions, accounts for the majority of emerging market jurisdictions' market capitalisation (90% of BRICS market capitalisation) and includes both jurisdictions that have already announced plans for adoption or other use of ISSB Standards as well as others at an earlier stage in their planning. More members are expected to join in the coming months.
In February 2025 the IFRS Foundation surveyed national standard-setters and regulators on the global landscape of the adoption or other use of ISSB Standards. The results of the survey will help us to track progress in the adoption or other use of ISSB Standards around the world and to provide updates about this progress to the ISSB stakeholders.
We received responses from 49 jurisdictions (7 jurisdictions in the EU/EEA were grouped as a single jurisdiction for the purposes of analysis). The geographic breakdown was 24 responses from EMEA, 16 from Asia-Oceania and 9 from the Americas.
All 49 jurisdictions that responded to the survey have introduced (or plan to introduce) sustainability-related disclosure requirements into their regulatory frameworks. Nearly all of these jurisdictions (47) have already adopted or plan to adopt or otherwise use ISSB Standards. Almost two thirds of responding jurisdictions (32) have either finalised or are now finalising their regulatory process.
The large majority of jurisdictions (76%) have declared a jurisdictional target of fully adopting the ISSB Standards. Another 9% are targeting adopting the climate requirements in ISSB Standards and 10% aim to permit use of ISSB Standards.
More than half of jurisdictions (30) said their jurisdictional approach for adopting or otherwise using ISSB Standards will become effective by the end of 2029. Most jurisdictions (70%) will phase in requirements, starting with initial application by some publicly accountable companies, followed by staged application dates for other companies.
Many jurisdictions (39%) plan to require assurance of sustainability-related disclosures. Most of these jurisdictions (77%) plan to mandate a limited assurance scope.
The responses to this third survey will help us shape our jurisdictional engagement and the Regulatory Implementation Programme further. The survey analysis will also inform our work as we begin to prepare jurisdictional profiles.
IFRS Foundation educational materials are provided free of charge. The IFRS Foundation permits users to link to materials on the IFRS Foundation website provided no paywall or registration is bypassed. If you would like to translate any of these materials, please use the contact us button below.
If you have any questions regarding the cooperation of the IFRS Foundation with national standard-setters, please contact Elena Kostina, IASB Technical Staff, via the contact us button.