The Accounting Standards Board (ASB) welcomes the publication by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) of its discussion paper (DP) on accounting for post-employment benefits (including pensions) as a step towards improving International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in this important area.

The IASB’s project will involve a fundamental review of all aspects of post-employment benefit accounting. The DP is the first output of the project and addresses more urgent issues with the aim of significantly improving accounting for pensions by 2011.

The DP considers a number of topics, including:

• the classification of pension promises as either defined benefit or contribution-based, which is intended to cater for arrangements that contain defined return promises; and
• the elimination of options to avoid or defer recognising deficits or surpluses in defined benefit pension plans.

As the IASB’s DP covers initially the more urgent issues, the proposals are narrower than those set out in the ASB DP ‘The Financial Reporting of Pensions’, which was published on 31 January under the Pro-active Accounting Activities in Europe (PAAinE) initiative. The ASB looks forward to the later phase of the IASB’s project and believes that the proposals in the PAAinE DP will stimulate debate and provide input to the IASB in its longer-term thinking.

The ASB encourages UK and Irish constituents to consider the IASB’s proposals as well as those set out in the PAAinE DP, and to comment directly to the IASB on its proposals. The IASB is seeking comments by 26 September 2008 and responses to the PAAinE DP are requested by 14 July 2008.

1. The ASB is an operating body of the Financial Reporting Council (FRC), the UK’s independent regulator responsible for promoting confidence in corporate reporting and governance. Its functions are exercised principally by its operating bodies (the ASB, the Auditing Practices Board, the Board for Actuarial Standards, the Financial Reporting Review Panel, the Professional Oversight Board and the Accountancy and Actuarial Discipline Board) and by the Committee on Corporate Governance.
2. The main role of the ASB is to issue accounting standards. The ASB collaborates with accounting standard-setters from other countries and the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) both in order to influence the development of international standards and in order to ensure that its standards are developed with due regard to international developments.
3. The ASB has eleven Board members, of whom two (the Chairman and the Technical Director) are full-time, and the remainder, who represent a variety of interests, are part-time.
4. The IASB Discussion Paper ‘Post-employment benefits (including pensions)’ was issued on 27 March 2008 and the IASB is seeking responses by 26 September 2008. Printed copies will be available shortly, at £10.00 each, from the IASCF Publications Department – e-mail: publications@iasb.org. From 7 April, the text of the Discussion Paper will be available freely from the IASB website at: www.iasb.org.
5. The Pro-active Accounting Activities in Europe (PAAinE) Discussion Paper ‘The Financial Reporting of Pensions’ (the publication of which was announced on 31 January in ASB Press Notice 320) can be downloaded, free of charge, from the FRC website at http://www.frc.org.uk/asb/press/pub1513.html.
   
   6. Press enquiries should be addressed to Ian Mackintosh (Chairman) on 020 7492 2434, David Loweth (Technical Director) on 020 7492 2420 or Andrew Lennard (Director of Research) 020 7492 2430.