Dive Brief:

• The Financial Accounting Standards Board has begun unpacking feedback it received from stakeholders — at meetings and from over 100 comment letters in recent months — whereby companies, report preparers and investors weighed in on accounting topics they want to see prioritized on the U.S. accounting standard setter’s agenda going forward.   
• While opinions varied significantly, the respondents consistently identified three top topics they wanted prioritized: risk management and hedge accounting, alternative funding arrangements and interaction of consolidation guidance and other transactions, a staff member told the board at its Wednesday meeting. Low priorities identified included recognition of interest income and personal financial statements.   
• About 31 respondents to the agenda consultation invitation to comment addressed crypto assets, with mixed views on whether the matter should be prioritized, but many noted that there are “several unresolved accounting challenges that continue to create diversity in practice and result in financial statements that do not reflect the economics of crypto assets,” according to a summary of the findings provided in the meeting handout.  

Dive Insight:

The initiative marks the first time since 2021 that the board has undertaken a broad agenda outreach effort. 

The previous agenda consultation, which was spearheaded in 2020 by the board’s then newly arrived Chair Richard Jones, led the FASB to establish new standards for certain crypto assets such as Bitcoin and to pursue a general theme around disaggregation of financial information in reporting, CFO Dive previously reported. 

Going forward this quarter and through 2026, the staff will analyze each of the over 70 topics using the criteria the board uses to set its agenda as well as the outreach findings. The board will then be asked if it wants to add each issue to the high priority technical agenda, with the tentative goal being for the board to review each topic next year, a staff member said at the meeting. 

“This is really the first step,” Jones said at the meeting. “Every single one of these issues will come back for a board vote at a future public meeting. So this is, by no means, your first bite at the apple, I may suggest this is just showing you the apple.” 

During the meeting, one board member noted that the feedback was less “concentrated” than that received in 2021. For example, in the 2021 consultation, nearly all of the stakeholders who responded to FASB’s Invitation to Comment supported a move by FASB to allow crypto assets with a “readily determinable fair value” like Bitcoin to be measured at fair value, CFO Dive previously reported. 

This time around the report states “a few stakeholders” suggested the board expand the scope of its Subtopic 350-60 standard to include “crypto assets created by the entity or related party that are subsequently reacquired in the open market in an arm’s length transaction.” Additionally, the report states some stakeholders called for prioritizing stablecoin issues, suggesting the board amend its definition of cash equivalents to include certain “highly liquid” stablecoins.