IFRS 4 Insurance Contracts Phase II - Current Situation and Outlook

This thesis deals with phase II of IFRS 4 Insurance contracts. The aim of the standard is to establish the principles that an entity should apply to report useful information to users of its financial statements about the nature, amount, timing and uncertainty of cash flows from insurance contracts, so that the financial statements of the entity are comparable with financial statements of other entities. Therefore IASB introduced building blocks measurement model, where an insurance contract is measured based on the present value of expected fulfillment cash flows, risk margin and contractual service margin. The building blocks model is based on making extensive judgments when measuring the insurance contracts. To explain the judgments, the standard requires the entity to disclose details about the judgments in the footnotes to the financial statements. The building blocks model is used mainly for life insurance contracts. For contracts that last one year or less (usually non-life insurance contracts) the standard allows the entities to use a simplified approach for measuring insurance contracts that is similar as the current practice of measuring non-life insurance contracts. Revenues from insurance contracts should depict the transfer of promised services arising from the insurance contract in an amount that reflects the consideration to which the entity expects to be entitled in exchange for those services (this approach is in line with the prepared IFRS 15 Revenue from Contracts with Customers).