BC131 IAS 27 Consolidated and Separate Financial Statements requires entities to use uniform accounting policies.[The consolidation requirements in IAS 27 were superseded by IFRS 10 Consolidated Financial Statements issued in May 2011, but the accounting policy requirements were not changed.] However, under current national requirements, some insurers consolidate subsidiaries without conforming the measurement of insurance liabilities using the subsidiaries’ own local GAAP to the accounting policies used by the rest of the group.

BC132 The use of non‑uniform accounting policies reduces the relevance and reliability of financial statements. However, prohibiting this would force some insurers to change their accounting policies for the insurance liabilities of some subsidiaries in phase I. This could have required systems changes that might no longer be needed in phase II. Therefore, the Board decided that an insurer already using non‑uniform accounting policies for insurance contracts could continue to do so in phase I. However, if an insurer already uses uniform accounting policies for insurance contracts, it could not switch to a policy of using non‑uniform accounting policies (paragraph 25(c) of the IFRS).