Comments from ACCA to the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB) of the International Federation of Accountants, 15 January 2010.
ACCA welcomes the opportunity to respond to the consultation paper Auditing Complex Financial Instruments issued by the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB) of the International Federation of Accountants.
The consultation paper deals with the IAASB's plans to develop guidance relating to auditing complex financial instruments by revising extant International Auditing Practice Statement (IAPS) 1012 Auditing Derivative Financial Instruments. In this context, the paper includes as an appendix, and the IAASB states that it intends to use as a starting point, Practice Note 23 (Revised) Auditing Complex Financial Instruments (PN 23), which was issued in October 2009 as interim guidance by the UK Auditing Practices Board (APB).
ACCA was pleased to provide input to the APB during the recent revision of PN 23 and we are generally supportive of its content in a UK and Ireland context. For this reason we do not raise technical comments on PN 23 other than through our answers to the questions posed in the consultation paper in the context of its use as a basis for an international pronouncement.
The IAASB is currently deliberating the status and authority of the IAPSs and we draw attention to the fact that the outcome of that will have a profound effect on how IAPS 1012 should be revised, because the level of authority of a pronouncement is pervasive in determining its content and level of detail.
The consultation paper contains 26 questions, which we have used to structure our detailed response.
Read our full response by downloading the related document.