The insurance industry is urging international insurance supervisors to take a number of steps as they develop global insurance standards including looking at what it would take to fulfill a contract rather than assign a fair value to securities.

The Group of North American Insurance Enterprises, New York, made its case during Wednesday's meeting of the International Association of Insurance Supervisors' insurance contracts subcommittee in Basel, Switzerland.

The International Accounting Standards Board, London, and the Financial Accounting Standards Board, Norwalk, Conn., are working on a joint effort to come to consensus on the issue. The accounting bodies are expected to consider the issue during the week of Feb. 15.

Jerry de St. Paer, the group's executive chairman, told the IAIS committee that there is a movement away from the fair value approach.

Mr. de St. Paer said, however, that GNAIE believes that for life insurance contracts future rights should be treated by including a best estimate of future incomes and discounting the time value of money.

Similarly, GNAIE said that a present value of both considerations and obligations should be calculated and then a single margin used to achieve no gain or loss at issue.

And Mr. de St. Paer recommended that the expected costs and rights in a contract addressed in an insurance revenue recognition standard be re-measured regularly.

Such a requirement differs from a requirement to value securities at fair value, according to Doug Barnert, GNAIE's executive director. Regular re-measurement would be done only when there is a substantial change, he explained. Fair value accounting of assets would have to be reported every quarter, Mr. Barnert added.

He said if a security is really in trouble then its fair value should be reported. However, he added, if a security is performing properly and is generating cash flows then companies should not be required to report them at fair value.

The reason, said Mr. de St. Paer, is that external factors such as the government deciding to value troubled securities at a much lower value than a company's assets are being reported at could result in a markdown.

The concern is that while the focus has been on banks' asset impairments, fair value accounting would also impact insurers because of the securities that they hold in their portfolios.

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Insurers Urge Their Version For International Accounting

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