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IFRS

IFRS 9 Financial Reporting Issues in times of COVID-19

IFRS 9 (Financial Instruments) is widely considered as one of the more complex IFRS standards. With no major standards or amendments coming into play in 2020, the financial reporting for 2019 was expected to be straight forward.

However, no one could expect what lay ahead in the first few months of 2020, how the global pandemic would affect every aspect of the world we once knew. The next 3 months would bring not only severe personal challenges but also unprecedented challenges for governments and companies alike.

These challenges would also affect international reporting standards, including IFRS 9. The International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) also released a document in March 2020 responding to questions regarding the application of IFRS 9 during the COVID-19 pandemic in which they mentioned that a number of assumptions and linkages underlying the way ECLs have been implemented to date may no longer hold in the current environment. As a result, IFRS 9 models had to be reevaluated for their accuracy of results.

In this article we have identified 4 key areas of IFRS 9 which may need more focus during the current financial reporting cycle.

Read more on this topic and get in touch with our experts, Samer Hijazi, Audit Partner and head of Grant Thornton Abu Dhabi, Rokya Choukri, Associate Director and IFRS Specialist and Hammad UlAhad, Audit Senior Manager,  to help you with any possible queries you may have on this.