Key Takeaways

  • The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) on Monday issued updated guidance on accounting for derivatives, hedging, and contract revenue, aiming to clarify the scope of existing Topics 815 (Derivatives and Hedging) and 606 (Revenue from Contracts with Customers). The news comes from an announcement by the U.S. accounting standard-setter on Monday.
  • Under the exceptions listed in the update, the new derivatives accounting guidance will not apply to certain financial instruments related to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) arrangements, as well as specific research and development and litigation financing contracts, a FASB spokesperson said.
  • The issuance formally finalizes the standard update underpinning generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). The amendments will be effective for annual reporting periods beginning after December 15, 2026, and for interim or quarterly reporting periods within those periods, according to the accounting standards update document.

Deep Dive

The change to derivatives accounting guidance is the seventh standard update issued by FASB this year, a board spokesperson said. Other topics with updates issued on the board's priority technical agenda include the measurement of dividends paid in kind on equity-classified preferred stock, and a targeted improvement project for the statement of cash flows.

The derivatives update issuance comes more than two years after the board voted in 2023 to add the project to refine the definition of a derivative to its high-priority agenda. At that meeting, FASB member Frederick Cannon said the current guidance was not intuitive, causing assets that many capital market participants do not view as derivatives to be classified as such. Cannon said at the time he supported refining the guidance to move away from "playing whack-a-mole with items that pop up that are not derivatives," CFO Dive previously reported.

In April, FASB Chair Richard Jones said the board was fighting against so-called "scope creep," where some companies over-identify items as derivatives, obscuring the true economic picture of certain financial positions, CFO Dive previously reported.

A major complexity leading to the broad application of the current derivatives standard is that some of its criteria include financial arrangements with an underlying variable that could cause the arrangement's fair value to fluctuate. For example, the value of litigation financing can vary depending on whether the underlying case is won or lost.