The training was delivered by Stavros Violaris, Senior Manager, Financial Accounting Advisory Services of EY Cyprus, and Konstantinos Nikolopoulos, EY Greece Partner and CESA Actuarial Leader. The training covered the new Insurance Contract standard, IFRS 17, that is coming into effect from 2022 onwards. Participants varied from CFOs, CROs and Actuaries from several insurance companies in Cyprus.

The main aim of the training was to educate professionals from the insurance industry, on the new IFRS standard, IFRS 17. The new standard introduces the most significant change to European insurance accounting requirements in 20 years, requiring insurers to entirely overhaul their financial statements. Given the scale of this change, investors and other stakeholders will want to understand the likely impact as early as possible.

Stavros Violaris commented: “After more than 20 years in development, it is of course unsurprising that the new insurance standard, IFRS 17, poses a number of significant challenges for insurers. What is interesting to note is that the challenges are not restricted only to the back-office operations but may also impact the way profitability is looked at, the product design and other areas of the core business of insurers.”

Konstantinos Nikolopoulos also commented from his side: “A good percentage of the insurers in the Eastern Europe region have already completed their impact assessments and some have even started and made good progress with their implementation projects. The challenges are significant, planning though, will be the “key” for a successful transition to the new IFRS 17 standard both from a technical and a practical perspective.”