23 March 2016

The European Banking Authority (EBA) launched today a public consultation on reporting financial information using Generally Accepted Accounting Practices (GAAP) across EU jurisdictions. This is a decentralised public consultation, which takes place through National Competent Authorities across the EU and not through the EBA, so as to allow for a better informed discussion on questions that may be specific to the individual jurisdictions across the EU. All interested stakeholders can provide feedback directly to their National Competent Authorities (NCAs) by 15 April 2016.

The update process of the FINREP GAAP templates currently in use by institutions across the European Union (EU) has identified specific issues linked to national accounting frameworks across the EU. The EBA is now seeking the input from all those EU institutions that report financial information to their competent authorities through the FINREP framework and on the basis of national GAAP practices. As this is a decentralised public consultation, all concerned stakeholders will be able to provide feedback to their NCAs on the changes proposed by the EBA for the reporting templates (Annex IV).
National GAAP practices are closely linked to individual EU jurisdictions and the EBA believes that a decentralised consultation will benefit from the expertise of the authorities competent for each jurisdiction or Member State. Comments received by the EU banking industry will ensure that the regulatory package on financial reporting is appropriately tailored and will be included by the EBA in the updated version of the templates it is proposing.
All concerned parties are invited to contact directly their National Competent Authorities (NCAs) by 15 April 2016 in order to provide their feedback. The EBA will subsequently release a comprehensive and updated version of FINREP, covering both Annex III and Annex IV (IFRS and GAAP templates), and it will also amended Annex V (instructions) accordingly.

Legal basis

This public consultation follows on from a previous consultation in December 2015 on suggested changes to financial supervisory reporting (FINREP) which is based on the new IFRS 9 requirements. In order to allow some further analysis by the EBA on the interaction between GAAP practices and the FINREP framework, the templates and instructions related to the GAAP reporting were not included in December and are being consulted upon now.