Insurer data upgrade
International financial reporting standards are created by international standard-setting boards. IFRS 17 is designed to enable better understanding of insurer’s exposure, profitability and financial position and to facilitate comparison across similar insurance companies. Updates to financial standards are infrequent — the new standard replaces IFRS 4, which came into effect from 1 January 2005.
The New Zealand standard, NZ IFRS 17, went into mandatory effect for insurers from the start of the financial year, commencing on or after 1 January 2023. We issued the Interim Solvency Standard 2023 on 20 September 2022 and it is consistent with NZ IFRS 17. It went into mandatory effect for insurers from the date specified in each insurer’s modified licence conditions (intended to be the same date as the start of NZ IFRS 17).
Current QIR and AIR templates and definitions
On 12 May 2023, we finalised and published the new templates and definitions for Annual Insurer Report (AIR) and Quarterly Insurer Report (QIR). The templates and definitions will be updated from time to time. Each material change will have a new version number and we will specify the applicable version for each Report Date. It is the insurer’s responsibility to download and use the appropriate template version for each set of reporting to the Reserve Bank. Immaterial changes (for example, changes to the list of insurer names) will keep the same version number but will have a new release number.
The current version is version 1.4 (release 5), which was published on 26 October 2023.
Insurers must use version 1.4 of the templates for the following reporting:
- If the insurer’s balance date is 31 December, all Report Dates on or after 30 September 2023
- If the insurer’s balance date is in February or March or September, all Report Dates on or after 30 September 2023
- If the insurer’s balance date is in May, all Report Dates on or after 1 May 2023
- If the insurer’s balance date is in June, all Report Dates on or after 1 June 2023
- If the insurer’s balance date is in August all Report Dates on or after 1 August 2023
The changes made in version 1.4 are (for both AIR and QIR):
- [Definitions] Clarify that revenue and expense items includes relevant items recorded in both profit & loss and other comprehensive income in insurer’s financial statements or accounts.
- [AIR} New sheet “supplementary small insurer” for relevant insurers to record their eligibility for continuing small insurer exemptions, which is required because under NZ IFRS 17 annual gross premium income is no longer recorded in annual financial statements.
- [Definitions] A definition for annual gross premium income, new materiality threshold for “supplementary small insurer” sheet and restrict previous materiality for PART D supplementary to “supplementary overseas insurer”.
- Clarified dates for projected solvency figures, added end of current financial year to the tables.
- Added validation checks for Excel error codes (e.g. #REF!).
- Fix a small number of sign errors in validation checks.
- [AIR] Added new validation check for “financial forecast” sheet, movement in net assets, to compare start of year net assets with end of prior year figure.
- On “submission instructions” sheet changed filename check from automatic to a yes/no drop-down.
- Validation checks for zero figure has an increased tolerance to cater for rounded input figures.
- Some changes to facilitate RBNZ processing of data that do not affect insurer inputs.
Questions
If you identify errors in the templates and definitions or have any questions, please email [email protected] and copy your insurance supervisor.